The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 325: Bob Crawford—America's Founding Son

Episode Date: June 13, 2023

The Avett Brothers' standup bassist is not only a great musician but also an avid historian. Bob talks about music, family, slavery, abolitionism, and the amazing legacy of John Quincey Adams as chronicled in his podcast, Founding Son: John Quincey's America. Oh yeah, and there will be some mandolin playing.   Book mentioned: The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln by Sean Wilentz 

Hello, friends. It's the way I heard it, episode number 325. This one is called America's founding son. And Chuck, if you hadn't already sat through this conversation, would you know who America's founding son was? No. I don't think most people would. In fact, I'd never heard the expression before until I came across a podcast called Founding Son, which is essentially the very digested. story of John Quincy Adams and his somewhat remarkable place in history as our sixth president. I found this podcast because my friends over at School of Humans, which is a production company that I've been working with for years, produce a bunch of podcasts. And they said, my friend Chad said, Mike, you should talk to Bob Crawford. I'm like, that sounds familiar. Why don't I know who he is? He says, well, have you heard of the Avitt brothers? And I said, yes. Yeah, the musicians.

He said, well, he plays bass for them. Chuck, had you heard of the Avet brothers prior to this? No. Okay. We've really got to get you out more out into the public sphere. Yeah, you're just asking me all the wrong questions, Mike. These are not good questions for me. I don't like these questions.

All right. So two things that you need to know as you strap in and prepare to enjoy this conversation. Three, actually. The first is Chuck doesn't know anything about music or history. The second is our guest. Bob Crawford knows a great deal about both. The Avid brothers have been nominated for Grammy Awards. I think they're probably won a few. They've sold a bunch of albums. They're terrific. And they've been around playing music now for well over a decade. And there's an amazing documentary.

Have they been 20 years? 20 plus years, yeah. These are a couple of brothers who really, really like each other, genuinely, which is unusual for musicians. And they've got a very unusual sound. It's sort of Americana with a little bluegrass, with some alternative rock folk, right? But they're very, very popular in that world. And this guy, Bob Crawford, he plays bass for them. And he's also a total history junkie. In fact, he's always reading history books when they're on tour. That's how he passes time on the tour bus. And he's got a degree, right? Like a master's in history from somewhere? Yes, he does, Mike. Look at you knowing stuff. See, I just tossed you a softball and you crushed it all prepared and stuff.

Look, I'm just making the point because the world's full of historians, right? People with, you know, all the proper credentials and Bob has some of that. But mostly he's a fan. He's like Dan Carlin, who's been on this podcast before. That's right. He just loves history, specifically American history. and he has put together a great podcast that you, your whole family can enjoy. It's six episodes. Each one is about 35 minutes long. And it just talks about the incredible contribution that John Quincy Adams, our sixth president, made. And the incredible impact he had on this country, not necessarily as a president. Definitely not as president.

Yeah. He was a very qualified candidate. You know, of course, his dad was John. John Adams. And so he won the presidency, but it wasn't pretty. In fact, Congress, ultimately, the House of Representatives decided. And it was not a pleasant four years for him, but afterwards he ran for Congress. And after that, he did a number of things that ultimately put us on the path to ending slavery. I don't think this is a spoiler alert, Chuck. I think most people who are remotely interested in our past are up to speed with the broad strokes.

But I doubt that anybody knows, not anybody, but I doubt that most people know the true impact this guy had on modern life today. He is the bridge between Jefferson and Lincoln, vis-a-vis how our country. Our country is formed. It's imperfect. We've got this big albatross hanging around our neck called the original sin slavery. And it's got to go. And he is very instrumental in bridging that gap between Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln putting forth the, what does it call them? The Emancipation Proclamation. Yeah.

Phasers on Emancipation. That's it. John Quincy is the, and I think we make this point, he's the grout between those two incredible tiles, Jefferson and Lincoln. And look, this isn't a. history lesson, although full disclosure, you're liable to learn something you didn't know. But really, Bob is such an interesting guy to talk to because he's a very accomplished musician who happens to be a very devoted husband and father with a kid who has had an amazingly difficult time. I learned this both in the documentary and in the conversation you're about to hear.

So prepare to meet a really normal. enthusiastic music lover who also cares an awful lot about this country and loves his family a whole bunch. He's just a terrific guy. And he's really done, I think, a great service with his podcast. Founding Son, he also has one called The Road to Now. You'll hear about it as we chat. Get a load of Bob Crawford right after this. Do do do do do do do do dumb Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth?

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That's netsuite.com. NetSuite. slash Mike. Hi, Bob Crawford. Sir, how are you? I think it's Mr. Sir. I believe I've earned it. Mr. Rose, sir.

Man, what a pleasure to meet you, although I have to admit, full disclosure, I've had like a steady pick line of Bob Crawford in my reptilian part of my brain for the last 24 hours. I watched the documentary, which was just terrific. Basically, you've got this music career and you've got this historian career. And now you're a podcaster. I guess, I mean, what's your business card say? It says, tired. It says tired.

It says, shall sleep when thou's dead. Yeah. Because, you know, father, husband, big part of that. Big, big part of that. Yeah. So, well, let's start with that. How long have you been married now? And how are the kids, by the way? We've been married since July 4th, 2006. You got married on July 4th? We did. That was your doing, I'm sure. We eloped. Wow. In Beaufort, North Carolina. Get out of here. And the tall ships were there. Yeah. You know, the tall ships.

Sure. It was a big thing. It was a big special thing. And we got a bed and breakfast. And the morning of, we said, hey, at 9.30, there will be a minister slash psychic slash massage therapist. And we're going to get married right at that little coy pond, you know. in the front yard and you're all welcome. And the guests, you know, one very kind gentleman took photos and are my best man and the maid

of honor were a 70-year-old couple that we had literally just met. And yeah, we're going to try. So it was a traditional wedding. It was a traditional wedding. A coy pond, a masseuse, a psychic. Yeah. And you know what she said? She said, I now pronounce you, man and wife, you may kiss the bride.

I have a good feeling about this one. That's very good. I want to ask because I eloped and it ended tragically. But my family was so pissed off at me for doing that. Was your family really angry? My family was okay with it because they have an aversion to social gatherings, I think. I think. But her brother, who she's real close with, he wasn't happy about it.

You know, not in a mean way, but just wanted to be there. Yeah, people feel slighted. Yeah, my niece wished she could have been there, you know. Yeah. But that's what we did. You know, you did it. What were the tall ships specifically? Do you remember?

I don't remember which they were now. Because I grew up, you know, in the Baltimore Harbor. Oh, yeah. The constellation was always there. and I did a dirty job years ago in San Diego on the Star of India, which I think is one of the few that, I don't know if it's still in service, but they would still take that thing out. And it's just incredible, man.

I mean, of all the things that we could take a deep, deep, tangential dive into as a couple of history geeks, right? Life on the high seas in the 19th century, that rigging, that tar, that just, I mean, the intricacy and the work and just the sheer fortitude it took to keep one of those ships under sail and headed in the right direction, right? I mean, it just boggles the mind how they got from here to there with dead reckoning, no longitude, and the wind. I mean, is that part of what just sucked you in to the past, the way you've been,

forgive this turn of phrase, but so clearly sucked. Yeah, I'll forgive that. You know how they say history repeats itself? You're going to say that again. And then Mark Twain says history said, or allegedly, Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat it rhymes. Yeah. Which, okay.

Okay, it's closer. After doing the John Quincy Adams project, I feel like, history maybe doesn't quite repeat, but people haven't changed. Right. Our hearts. Right. We've got this, I got this device right here. I'm holding up an iPhone.

I can, you know, hey, we're talking to each other from, I don't know how many miles away recording this. Yeah. And, you know, all the things we can do with our phones. I don't need to get into it. But, um, but the human heart, the human soul. the temptation to greed and lust and power, and then the ability to do infinite good, it's all, we got it. We still got it. And the same John Quincy Adams, our series covers a lot of

the 1830s and 1840s. We're the same people as those people, and I'm going to say we're probably the same people as the people from the 1730s, 1740s. Take it back to the Old Testament. I don't think we've changed much as the heart and the soul, whatever you want to call it, go. But the technology, navigating by the stars and being able to put that ship like John Quincy Adams when he was 11 years old, going over to Paris, going over to France with his father.

And that was a harrowing journey. Oh, my God. It's just months long. Yeah. And with no guarantee of any kind, no certainty at all. It's just an extraordinarily different time with extraordinarily different tech. We really are rather predictable as a species. Dan Carlin was on here about a year or so ago, and he made the same point. You know, it feels so often like we're living in such

extraordinary times, such, well, divided times. And I really want to get into this with you about the rhyming of history because it's impossible to listen to your very excellent series, by the way, and not be just like routinely gobsmacked by the parallels. I mean, when you're talking about Adams at some points, I hear rhymes with Hillary Clinton, oddly enough. And when you're talking about Andrew Jackson, it's so clearly a Trumpian kind of thing that's happening. And as we talk about this awful, awful scourge of slavery that we're wrestling with and has so divided people, it's really difficult not to think about abortion as a topic. All of these things come together. I think the best compliment I'll pay you and then just kind of turn it over to you

is to say that you made the present more interesting than it currently is by fixating on the past. and that's the great gift of history, in my view, and that's the great talent of, I'm not even to call you an historian, although I suspect you could be by some definitions, but you're such a fan of history, Bob, and it so comes through in what you've done. Thank you, Mike. That means a lot to me, and I think what comes through in the work is the enthusiasm I have for it, the love I have for it because I read a book and I'm going to hold it up and no one's going to see it. It's the rise of American democracy, Jefferson to Lincoln by the great Sean Willens. He's my Bob Dylan of historians.

And he was so kind to be an expert in this series, I'll lend his voice to it. That book maybe came out in 2004, 2005. And what we learn in school is we learn Revolution, George Washington, Civil War Abraham Lincoln. And what we don't realize and what you realize when you read a book like The Rise of American Democracy, Jefferson to Lincoln, is Civil War didn't just fall upon us. You know, it is this 30-year process of division and of refusal, you know, the South. Put yourself in 1835. You would have no inclination that slavery would ever. end. Right. There was nothing that would tell you that the South, they were never going to give up

their form of labor, right? Their property. How dare you even suggest it? They would tell you. This is, you have your machines in the north, you're burgeoning manufacturing industries, and you're making the tools that we use on the plantation, and you're making the clothes for our property. But we have our machines. and they are of flesh and blood. And they've been with us for all time. For all time. And you know what?

They would say, this would be the slave owner. They'd say, we're doing them a favor. We're giving them a quality of life better than what the working man, the free immigrant working man in the north, they have a better quality of life. They are looked after. And they're learning the gospel. You know, so it's like stepping into another world, but then you go, wait a minute. This, when you study history, like, this is our world.

And it's happening. It is happening now. You could say- And it's yesterday. It's yesterday, Bob. I love that- It's not last week. It's not last month.

I mean, it's like, it's that. That's right. Less than 200 years ago. Yes. Less than 200 years ago. Because, look, Adams wins the 1824 presidential election. He wins it not by being elected by the people, by his fellow citizens. He wins it in Congress because it was a disputed election, right?

No one won a plurality, so the vote went to the House. But I love, I just want to kind of add to this for a second. You mentioned Adams in thinking of Hillary Clinton. Now, this is why I thought of Hillary Clinton when pondering Adams. on paper, when he ran for the presidency, he was the most qualified person to ever stand for that office, except for George Washington. He was appointed the minister, his first official diplomatic post by Washington as the minister to the Netherlands. He's the only person in the diplomatic corps that could speak four languages. And so he was Washington's guy in Europe.

And so when Washington writes his farewell address, his very famous farewell address, there are great books out there about it. And he says, beware of foreign entanglements. It's because he's getting all this intel from John Quincy, young John Quincy Adams. And then Adams goes on to serve in the Senate. and he's a federalist, right? And Thomas Jefferson is a Democratic Republican, and he has this embargo act that almost takes us to war.

And Adams is the only man in his party that supports Jefferson. And so he's drummed out of the Senate. He's let his party leaves him essentially because Adams is a man of the, of the whole union. Then he's appointed by Madison. as the first minister to Russia. At the end of the war of 1812, he leads the commission at the Treaty of Ghent and negotiates the peace with Great Britain.

And then he's eight years as James Monroe's Secretary of State, perhaps the greatest Secretary of State we've ever had. And he negotiates Florida from Spain, almost gets Texas. That's good one. That straight line from, what is it, Wisconsin, over to, Washington State. That's the Adam Strip. He negotiated that. And the Monroe Doctrine, that resolution that says, hey, stay out of North America's business. Okay? England, Spain, France, stay out of our business. We're all good. Stay out of our hemisphere. That's pretty much John Quincy Adams. So yes,

1824, he stands for the presidency, probably the most qualified person to do so. But unlike Hillary Clinton, he actually got it. He did, but it wasn't pretty. No mandate. No mandate. And perhaps it was a corrupt bargain. Right? That's what they said.

A deep state conspiracy. Yeah. God, that's really where it starts to rhyme. But what got me, Bob, was he said something about the piety or the piousness. He painted with a very broad brush, not a very flatter. way to the people who at the time, you know, this is an agrarian society and they're not book learned like him. They speak half a language, maybe one, not four, right? He basically calls him a basket of deplorables. He does. He says to his fellow politicians in Washington,

hey, look, I have this amazing, ambitious agenda. I want government money to fund canals, bridges and roads a la infrastructure. I want the federal government to fund that. I want a naval academy. I want the federal government to fund that. I want lighthouses in the sky. What's that? It's scientific research.

It's telescopes. He's like, they got them in Europe. Why don't we have them here? He says, your constituents probably don't want this. At the time, they couldn't imagine the federal, a bloated federal government. We didn't have that. He says, we cannot be palsied by the will of our constituents, meaning we're not going to let a basket of deplorables tell us how we're going to vote on X, Y, or Z.

And people today might not get that posseed by the will of our constituents, but they got it back then. and Andrew Jackson, who he had only months ago, defeated in the House vote for the presidency, jumps on it, jumps on it, and says, clutch the pearls. I can't believe he would say that the common man should not have a say in how the federal money is spent. look at this. Look at this. How dare you talk down my deplorables? Exactly. Exactly.

And what is, I was telling Chuck about Martin Van Buren a second ago, about the Democratic Party. So I've got over here and you can't see it on the podcaster. But it's assigned pardon by President Martin Van Buren to someone. My wife got it for me for an anniversary present, number of years ago. I've looked up the name. I don't know what it's for or who it's for. I just want to say, she gets you, dude. She does. She does. She does. She married a history geek on July 4th. The same day that both Adams and Jefferson die. Yeah, that's amazing. But you know,

when you get married on July 4th, there will always be fireworks. That's beautiful. That's nice. So Van Buren over there, who ultimately becomes president, and he's actually Jackson's heir apparent. He starts the Democratic Party. He's the Carl Rove, if you will, behind the coalition that becomes the Democratic Party. And this is built behind Jackson, who is this populist hero,

at a time when the country is growing west and south, not northeast, which was where, you know, Adams, he's the establishment. man. I mean, he's elitist. He speaks four languages, right? His dad was a president. His dad was a president. Hello, Bush. Where did he go? He went to Harvard. Of course he did. Yeah. Of course he did. And so, uh, as a president, he was out of touch. He was H.W. looking at the watch during the debate with Clinton. Right. Here's why you're on this podcast. Well, there are a couple reasons. Our mutual friends. Chad Crowley over at School of Humans, spoke well of you.

Listeners might know. Chad was the guy that we produced six degrees with. Bob and I have a similar hobby that got a little out of hand for history. But mostly, mostly, it's the fact that your obsession with John Quincy Adams, I really think I understand it because he was the most qualified candidate who won, but had really, I mean, I wouldn't call it a failed presidency, but it just simply didn't come close to measuring up to what it could have been for all kinds of reasons and all kinds of errors.

Some forced, some not, right? And then, and then time marches on, and he does something no one's ever done before, right? He runs for Congress, a former president running for Congress, and he wins. And so your podcast is called Founding Sun because you're basically taking the position that, you know, Jimmy Carter flirted with a different level of effectiveness post-term. But Adams reaches through time and taps Lincoln on the shoulder. Adams, he's the grout between the tiles. Yeah, right?

I love that. I love that. Well, that's the way I've always thought about Dirty Job. and it's the way I've always thought about most of the stuff that I do. It's the people who come in second or whose delayed gratification is such that they're going to have to wait until they're 70 to really put the ball through the hoop. And that's what's just so wonderful about this. So, I mean, we could talk for five hours and still scratch the surface. But if you could, just pick up where his presidency ends and talk about what he did.

And oh, and also too, when you said that the people back in those days understood what he meant when he talked about, say that phrase again, pausied by the will of our constituents. Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you, about my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial. and if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page and read the comments. They're hysterical. In this commercial, you'll not only see Peggy Rowe gently criticizing her oldest son for his longstanding and well-established commitment issues. You'll learn about the latest offer from Pure Talk, which includes unlimited talk, text, and data for just $3499 a month

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that was the age of oratory back then. Yeah. You know, and people weren't educated, but they weren't stupid. They were curious. They could follow along with some really amazing phraseology and the speeches that were given off the cuff and his ability to hold forth. All of that, unexampled.

Yeah, look, this is something that's accessible to all of us. Newspaperarchives.com, it's less expensive. than Netflix. But you can read, you sign up, you can read newspapers going back to the mid-1700s. And I do it all the time because when I read a footnote and a book I'm reading and they, you know, it was the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1825. Like, I want to go to that article. I want to read that article.

And then you start reading the article. And then you read like the ads. Oh, man. And this is when you, when you realize that we have. haven't changed. We're the same people, but just the quality of writing, right? And a lot of these penny presses, they were here today, gone tomorrow. Every press, every political newspaper was owned by a politician, was basically a party-run paper. Do you think our media's biased today, sure, granted, to some varying degrees for varying outfits, but every newspaper was

biased. That's what newspapers were. They were organs of the party. One last thing. I'm a terrible going down rabbit holes, but also for your listeners, if you want to get a real sense of how well the common man with no schooling wrote and read that ability, read some Civil War letters from soldiers. I mean, these things are, more powerful than any Avid Brothers song could ever hope to be. I mean, like, this is like the grasp of language by people who had no education. So anyway, I'll leave that there. More to your point.

No, actually, you know what? I can't let you leave it there because if you're going to invoke the Avid brothers, watching that doc, I did think of the Civil War as I was listening to them talk because they are, they're out of time in a way, you know, North Carolina boys, I mean, write beautiful. They write hymns. I don't have to tell you. You've been playing bass with them for years now. And I agree they write hymns. I agree. First and foremost. Yes. So I think that this whole too long didn't read impatient culture that we're in is really best reflected exactly as you just described. People should go back and look at old newspapers.

You're going to need your glasses, by the way. Those papers are in like four point font. I mean, it's ridiculous how small the letters are. We can do this now. I'm pushing my fingers to expand. We have to do that. But it's like the capacity to read a 6,000-word article does not exist today. Right.

And the capacity to read through some of the best writing is in advertising. You look back in the 20s and 30s, they take 600 words to describe an example. experience, right? They're amazing ads. So good. Yeah. Now it's, you know, two words. And what you lose when you can't read, um, you know, a 60 minute Atlantic piece, like there are Atlantic magazine pieces that will take you an hour to read. And when you don't allow yourself the capacity to do that, um, you lose the ability to perceive nuance and context. This is what I notice about our conversation in the country on social media. And I do believe technology is really driving, it's driving us all into a bad place. But we've lost the ability for nuance to understand nuance.

It's either black or white. It's either good or bad. It's either, you know, it's either going to end the world or it's going to save the world. And the truth is somewhere in between. If you don't have the capacity to ponder that or to see it or accept it, you know, we're all in trouble. Okay. So with that in mind, we sort of concede that the country was possessed of a different level of patience in those days. He would filibuster for four days.

Oh, yes. John Quincy would, right? Yes. For four days. He held the floor at one point for 10 days. in the summer of 1838 arguing about Texas. So I'll try to be real quick here. Texas becomes an independent nation, republic, if you will, in May of 1836.

And immediately there are calls, particularly by Southerners, to bring Texas into the union as a slave state. But hey, maybe carve it into 13 slave states. upset that balance of the Missouri compromise. And so you had actual states sending in petitions resolutions for and against the annexation of Texas. The Foreign Relations Committee who handled that did not read any of them. They just said, you know what? Our vote is to not do anything for or against Texas.

Stay out of it. And Adams, who wants to talk about slavery and wants to talk against Texas, Texas finds a rule that says the committee shall read these documents, you know, anything presented to us or that they need to do research on an issue, a topic. They have to read the research, essentially. And he finds this in. And so one Southern Congressman puts forward an amendment to annex Texas. and Adams puts in an amendment to the amendment to read the resolutions.

And so he holds, however that arcane rules of order were at that point, he gains the floor. And for, you know, 10 days, two weeks, an hour a day, he's talking about slavery. He's reading the actual resolutions from every state. He is talking about women and the women's right to vote, how that should be. and he is basically holding forth against what he called the slaveocracy about the dangers of bringing Texas in as a slave state. Because we've got a gag rule, right?

Right. At this point? Yes, sir. So explain what that meant and how it really just kind of retarded the ability to even have a national conversation about a thing that was clearly already on everybody's mind. Well, you know, so when you have passed. power, when you have a super majority, so to speak, either in party size or ideology, I'm in North Carolina, there's a super majority, Tennessee has a super majority, Montana has a super

majority, a lot of states, Texas, you can control the floor and you can control the discussion and what is talked about. And this is the most important contribution, I believe, that John Quincy Adams gave the history of the United States. no one wanted to talk about slavery. It was the elephant in the room, okay? What happens in the 1830s is abolitionists, and they were a radical group, morally focused, Christian, you know, fundamentalists, abolitionists wanted to end slavery immediately. And so that was a very radical view.

So what they began to do is send petitions to Congress. And in the 1830s, as the First Amendment states, the First Amendment gives us all a right to petition. I'm sorry, I'm getting it. If we can just hold here for one second, I'm getting a text from my daughter's teacher. Mm-hmm. Go ahead. Okay. All right.

You're good? Yes, I'm great. Okay. So, okay. Is this Hallie? Yes, it's Hallie. How is she doing? I'm sorry, just take a hard left.

This rabbit hole just found another rabbit hole. It did. It did. I'm so sorry. But I'm going to get back to Adams here. But Hallie's doing good. She had a recurrence in 2020. She had seven-year brain tumor remission where she had no evidence of disease.

And at seven years for something as horrible and malignant as a brain. brain tumor to have seven years of remission is we kind of thought we were we thought we were past it and then it came back in September of 2020 which is like the most 2020 thing right this is just so 2020 right there's nothing else going on in 2020 right so um she had a resection uh amazing surgeon in Memphis at Le Bonner hospital there just mile down the road from St. Jude took out the brain tumor from the back of her head, back of her brain, and she had full brain and spine radiation. And that was her second round of brain ready.

She had radiation of the brain when she was three. Wow. And you don't do that. Like that's not typical, but she's doing incredible. Like if you met her, you would just be amazed by her. and she's joyful and she's sweet and she's also like a teenage girl. Well, Bob, I met her last night. I met her in the documentary.

Yeah. This documentary, folks, again, here's one more rabbit hole down in the rabbit hole that we're already in adjacent to the rabbit hole. But it's a terrific documentary about just a singular musical group. And here's the bass player who plays a stander. up bass, a hell of a stand-up bass, by the way. Which is such an interesting instrument. Here's another rabbit hole for you, but I mean, the electric bass is fine.

But you just can't. You just can't. There is no substitute. It's an old-timey instrument, which I guess is perfect for you in so many ways. But then here comes this adorable little daughter and this terrible news and the way it brought the band closer and the way it crystallizes priorities. and the way it does what tragic news has always done from the beginning of time, the way it tempers you and refocuses things.

It's an extraordinary moment in an otherwise extraordinary film that really has nothing to do with music or history except for the fact that it kind of maybe has everything to do with both. Thanks, Mike. Well, you got to give praise to Mike Bonafiglio and Judd Apatow, who made, may it last. and so respectfully and beautifully captured my family's story, and I believe the story of the band.

Hallie's good at Scan to Scan. We'll go back the end of June. And, you know, so far so good. Just keep pressing on. You know, now, in a transparently ham-fisted way to bring it back to Adams, the difficulties that guy was facing in his personal life. at the same time he was taking on, you know, slavery and the history of our country. I mean, so much tragedy in his own life.

It's just amazing what people are capable of enduring. Yeah, so when he was leaving to be the minister to Russia, he and his wife and their kids were at the dock to get on the ship, he tells his wife our two oldest sons can't come with us they're going to stay with my parents crushes her crushes his wife

that was just not Louisa Louisa Louisa Catherine that's right and then in Russia they have a daughter and she dies and then two months after he loses

the 1828 election to Andrew Jackson his old oldest son who was very troubled, George Washington Adams, alcoholism ran in their family. Depression ran in their family. He was depressed. He suffered from depression. And George Washington Adams essentially committed suicide. He was just out of his head on the steamship coming from Massachusetts to meet his parents in D.C. And he jumped off the back of the ship and died and drowned. And then a couple years later, 1834, John Adams, his son, his middle son,

John Adams, died of essentially alcoholism. And so, no, that's another level I connect with Adams on. Like I just, I look at the human suffering and the ability to deal with his Depression in work, right? That's what people do for good or ill. They throw themselves into a passion, another passion, right? And so Adams did that. We're just folks, right? We're just the deplorables.

We're just the regular people trying to function, going to our cubicles, going to our thing. But men like John Quincy are at such pivotal points in history. and I think they probably know it. When I think of Lincoln, talk about rhyming and his problems with his family and the tragedy of his kids and whatnot. It's just extraordinary.

I just want to point it out because you, you know, well, because that's kind of what's on my mind right now as I try and think about the consequences of men who are called, women who are called. You know, it just, sometimes it just feels so destined and other times it just feels so random. You know, Mike, I think when you read history, it's always they had seven kids and three lived into adulthood. And it's almost like you take for granted.

But they, they suffered. They mourned those kids. It wasn't like, well, we got three. That's great. You know, they mourned the four who didn't make it. And some people, it wrecked them for their lives. And I'm sure it wrecked all of them for their lives. we just don't write about that because it was hidden or it was, you know, channeled into another

vice, you know, it's like, or it was expressed in obedience to God and just faith. You know, their faith was, I don't want to say stronger, but maybe their faith was more nuanced than ours is, you know? Well, you know, it feels sometimes like we're all. being tempered for something. We just don't know for what or when. But in John Quincy's case, it seems, you know, and I know I'm asking to kind of leapfrog around from year to year, but a lot of people might be familiar with Amistad and or at least a movie. I don't know how much they really know about it. But was that sort of the pivotal point in his life when all

of this testing and all of this prior failing and frustration. Do you think all that struggle prepared him for that moment? Or was there an even larger one? Well, I need to, for me, one thing about him builds on the next. I told you earlier that he was out of touch with the common man when he was president. And that's why he had a failed one-term presidency. He was out of touch. He didn't know how to connect with people. He was this intellectual heavyweight and this crumudgeoned, and he didn't want to play politics, much like Jimmy Carter in some ways. And so abolitionists, and I'll be quick on this, but good to go back to the point that I interrupted myself on, abolitionists, they're sending petitions to Congress. And these petitions are for the end of slavery in Washington, D.C. It was accepted

that by the Constitution, the three-fifths clause, that slavery was constitutionally in the states, was constitutionally protected, and Congress couldn't do anything about it. But in the district and in the territories, abolitionists said, that's where we're going to fight. We're going to fight to end slavery in D.C. That's our first step. And so they start sending these petitions. And Adams begins to read them, because that's how you petitioned your government as per the First Amendment. you sent them a petition and they literally read it on the floor of the house. One hour every day for the first two weeks of a session of Congress and then one hour every week thereafter.

They started Maine. They worked their way down through the states. For some reason, they started north to south. And those congressmen got up and read petition from, you know, Mike or Chuck or whoever. And so Adams begins to read anti-slavery petitions. At first, it's not a big deal. But then they start coming in droves, in droves, in droves. And Southern Congressman gets sick of them.

So they pass the gag rule. That means you can't read them. They come, you table them. You don't print them. You don't talk about them. Petition comes, slavery petition, anti-slavery petition comes. You table it. Adams was like, wait a minute.

I don't stand for immediate emancipation. but what you're saying is you are infringing on someone's First Amendment rights, the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. That sets Adams off. And that's when he becomes an anti-slavery activist, not because he agrees with abolitionists on every radical point, they believe, radical for the time, but because he's defending the right to free speech. So then in 1840, when he defends the Amistad captives, the Amistad was a slave ship. The international slave trade was outlawed in the early 1800s. Okay.

So these captives, these from what is present day Syria, Leon, these captives were brought from Africa to Cuba and then slave laundered and then they were going to go on to somewhere else. Do do do do do do do do. I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician. He had zero interest in running a food company, but he was annoyed that so much imported meat was being deceptively marketed and labeled as domestic and decided to

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don't take a chance on a foreign ranch, get good ranchers now. E-Haul! Explain this slave laundered thing because that's very... Well, so as best I understand this, is like you couldn't have international slave trade, but if you had slaves from Cuba and they were legal, right? But not to the United States, but to Spain or to Cuba. And someone else could maybe explain this better than I just did. But what happens is the ship, the homicide,

is literally trying to go like from one part of Cuba over to another part of Cuba to fulfill this like laundering process. And the slave ship is owned by the Spanish slave trade. So it shouldn't be there in the first place. And then there's a mutiny on the ship, and the cook is killed, the captain is killed, the two slave traders are still alive. The Sinkai, who's the leader of the captives, says, take us back to Africa. And so in the daytime, the guy would go one way. At nighttime, the guy would go north, hoping to be, you know, seen off the coast of the United States.

And eventually the ship is seen by a United States coast guard, what would be today, the Coast Guard cutter. And the ship is seized. And there becomes this like sensation. Like this is like you have the guy who the captain who seized the ship wants money for the cargo, for the slaves and for the ship. He says, I seized it. It's mine.

You have the slave owners who, the guys who were selling the slave saying that they are actually property of Spain. You have the Spanish government saying, give us the ship back. And then you have Martin Van Buren who's running for re-election and doesn't want to have to deal with any of this. And so the case ultimately goes up to the Supreme Court. And John Quincy Adams agrees to defend the captives before the Supreme Court. And he gives one hell of a speech. Now, at this point, he's how old, Bob? He's, I believe, 75.

Okay. And his presidency ends when he's how old? So this is 1840. Well, no, no, he's probably in his, he dies at 81 in 1848. This is 1841. Okay. Okay. So he's out of Congress.

74. Yeah. Yeah. So from the time he enters Congress to the time he dies, that's 17 years. He's in the house for 17 years before he dies. And his presidency ends in 1828. So this is 12 years, 13 years after his presidency. Got it. Okay. And so he gets these guys acquitted and gets them freed. They send them back to Africa to their home. And this is when he becomes a rock star. Right? This is when he becomes accepted. by his fellow citizen. He becomes appreciated for his decades of public service. This man who at seven years old witnessed, eyewitness to the Battle of Bunker Hill, who goes to Paris with his father, as his father and Jefferson and Franklin are negotiating to bring the French into the war on the side of the Americans, who serves in the Senate, who serves as president, who serves as Secretary of State, amazing diplomatic career,

and then serves in the House of Representatives. And it becomes apparent to the American people, North and South, more North and South, but North and South, that this guy is an American treasure. That kind of gave him, you talk about that victory lap. You see musicians take it when they get in their 70s and 80s. Sometimes they get one more time around the... racetrack, you know?

I think it's worth like circling back just to talk about the pressure a little bit. You know, he, so he sees Bunker Hill. I mean, he's bearing witness to the beginning of the American Revolution. Yeah. His dad at this point is not even vice president yet, but he's going to be, and then he's going to be president, right? John Adams is going to be the second president of the United States. He just has a front row seat to all of this.

but Bob, what does John Adams, Quincy's dad, say to the boy or to the young man? I mean, I forget it, but it's basically, it's a bit of pressure. It is. If you do not rise, God, I had this memorized until about a week ago. If you do not rise to the head of your profession and your education, it's oh, only to your laziness, your slovenliness, and your obstinacy. Didn't he also say country, though? If you do not rise to the head of your country and your, yes, and your profession, something

to that extent. Your profession and your, basically, if you don't do what I did, it's because you're a layabout. Yeah, and this is why he's like his two, two of his three sons, two of his brothers died young and were alcoholics. So imagine your dad being president of the United States and a man of rectitude, right? I mean, John Adams is really, I think, maybe the only founding father who didn't own a slave. That's right. Right?

His love affair with his wife, Abigail, is the stuff of legend. Those letters. Talk about going back and reading old letters, man. Yeah. Oh, my God. They were hot for each other. Yeah, man. No, that's the standard for a love letter.

But you're the son and you're watching all of this. happen and you know history is calling you. And everything sort of goes to plan, but nothing lines up. And then your beloved children start to die. And still, nothing lines up. And you are convinced, convinced that the union can't stand, right? There's no way this country is going to be able to stay together unless we resolve the issue of slavery. And you believe this in your bones at a time when you're not even really allowed to talk about it in a meaningful way. Yeah. And so, I mean, just, it's just extraordinary, you know.

Just to put a point on it, if you do not rise to the head not only of your profession, but of your country, it will be owing to your own laziness, slavannliness, and obstinacy. To put it in 20th century terms, fat, drunken, stupid is no way to go through life. Yeah. A lot. Animal House. Yeah. Well, I mean, look, if we're turning to Dean Wormer for the truth, right, it's probably because, I mean, what would Dean Wormer say looking 30 years ahead to a time when everybody

gets a trophy? There are no consequences for failure. Shame is not even a thing anymore. Right. Right? I mean, wow. I put shame up there with nuance. You know? How? We've lost our ability to feel shame. Like we haven't, but if you are a politician, most of them have. Because now they're taught, you messed up, you don't apologize, you double down. You just barrel through. You just keep saying it. Double down.

Just keep saying it. It's not my fault, it's your fault. So if you can't feel shame, and when I was growing up, if someone in the public eye did something wrong, they came out and said, I'm so sorry I did this thing wrong and I'm stepping down. Or I'm, you know, the idea now is that if you're a politician, you don't step down. Like being a congressman or a senator or a governor or president is more important than the country. Like you holding onto your job as a representative, as a public servant is more important. than the country you have pledged to serve.

Do you think that the death of shame might be somehow linked to the degradation of manners and that maybe somehow or another dueling, which was very much a thing in John Quincy's time, very much a thing? Do you think that, like, the consequences of a duel, even the ones that weren't fought, even the ones that concluded with both men shooting into the air, but just the mere existence of the practice, do you think that that somehow informed behavior, including the things we're talking about right now? Did it keep people honest, or did it just, were we simply less civilized then? Well, again, I believe we haven't changed.

So I really truly believe that. Okay, so I think what has killed shame for now in the time we live in is the loss of community belonging to community clubs, church. I am a believer, you know, I'm a Christian believer, but I believe just church in even terms of something that you belong to outside of yourself, right? Something you are, a community you are responsible to beyond, your person. The Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts. All of that stuff.

Future Farmers of America. The JCs, the Kwanis Club. The 4H Club. 4H. Yes. Well, you know what else is interesting about this is that it's also a question of the types of families that we have nowadays. Like when I was a kid, I think when we were kids, Mike, it was it was not unusual to see three generations living under the same roof, you know. And you learned to get along a lot better. You learned about responsibilities and we took care of one another, just even within our own families. And now it's very different. Well, and when you do see it, it's not because anybody wants to be there. It's because the kid with the four-year degree can't get a job and they got no money,

so it's back in the mom's basement and so forth and so on. But yeah, I still think you're right. It's not the same tune, but it's a variation on a theme to make it. So have you heard of Alexis To Coville, Democracy in America? Sure, to Toqueville, yeah, right. Thank you, thank you. One time on a podcast, I said derogata type. You know what people said? Degera type.

Yeah, derogat type. Sorry, I do make those mistakes. And I'm ashamed. You look all busted up. So he comes to America and he has dinner at this dinner party and he's sitting next to John Quincy Adams. and he asks him about slavery. And this is when Adams is just entering Congress, maybe before he's even showed up.

And he says something to the effect of in the South. They have created a culture where white men don't have to do hard labor. Their slaves do that. And so they invest their time in other pursuits. and horse racing and, you know, being dandies and such. Gun fights, duels. To Adams, dueling culture was an outgrowth of southern plantation culture. And if you weren't out there busting your butt on the farm, if you had slaves doing it

and you weren't doing yourself, you had too much time on your hands. And that was going to give you a bloated ego and a bloated self-importance and a higher sense of faux honor, not real honor, faux honor. And so that's how Adams looked at dueling. So I don't feel like the end of dueling. I kind of agree with Adams. I also admit that I'm not a dueling history of dueling expert. And I'm sure there were northerners who participated in duels. I'm positive. Obviously, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, right? Perhaps the most famous duel of all time. They're two northerners. So I can't speak to dueling, but I do agree with you that there is a deficit of we're not responsible to other people like we should be. And that might mean

our family members or our friends or our co-workers, you know, we we need to, you know, I live in a town that's very urban rural split. It's like, you know, here in North Carolina. And I don't know the political beliefs or the ideologies of the guy who's pumping gas next to me and we talk about the football game. Or, man, it's a beautiful day, man, isn't it? Or the next guy who's like, last week was like, hey, man, you dropped your wallet. Like, you know, I don't know if that guy's a Republican or a Democrat or Trumpist or, you know,

whatever. Like, you know, I just, I see people. I see country guys holding the door for old black women at the convenience store. I see these things around me all the time. Like I just, I make these notes of it in my head, like all these interactions I see of just common decency. And we have it,

but then we get on our social media and we get in our media bubbles, our little silos, and we kind of like, you know, cover up and we lose it. We have it at the Ava Brothers concert. You know, you got it there. You probably had it at the Springsteen concert.

I hope it was amazing. But, you know... Well, you have that community that you're talking about. That's a shared experience and a good concert and good music. It brings people together, you know, in a way like inspirational language will. You know, back to Adams. That was such a gift. His words could bring people together in ways.

that most people, they just didn't have the facility to do it. Your band brings people together because you guys speak a different sort of language that most of your fans didn't know they knew until they heard it, right? There's something magical about all of this in my mind. I don't know if it's still like this out there, but in 2012, I walked out on stage. in the first five rows I see a guy wearing a Obama Hope shirt, you know, those Obama shirts?

Oh yeah. And then, you know, over to probably in front of Joe Kwan, there's a guy wearing a don't tread on me, Gadsden Flag, that was known for the Tea Party at that time. And I thought, man, we are the neutral zone. Yeah, you are. Love it. Like, you know, I believe each of us are a,

special interest group of one, right? Look, what's going on in the Crawford House? What do I have that? Well, health care, this, that. We all have our political priorities, the things that we would like to see past. But when you get down below that, to the core, we're the same people.

We're all the same. Doesn't mean matter where you're from or where you work or, you know? This is clunky and hard to articulate. I kind of flirted with it when I talked about, the way that the Avid brothers reminded me of men out of the Civil War for some reason. I guess we were talking about letters and just their ability to turn a phrase. But there's so many other parallels. Like, your band, these guys really love each other, these brothers.

And that's extraordinary. Not because brothers don't love each other, but there's a long history of brothers in music that kind of crap the bed. It ain't pretty. It just doesn't work out. It ain't pretty. No, it's not. It's like the best you can hope for is brothers that like don't turn on each other.

But these guys finish each other's sentences. They magnify each other. There are a couple scenes in this documentary. I don't know how Judd got it, but it really feels like a window into the creative process. We witnessed a song being written. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

It was amazing. And collaboratively. Yeah. Beautiful. performed. Yes. Like, I mean, it's a great moment because that's what I mean by heart to articulate. The creative process is magical.

And, you know, people try and unpack it and they try and reduce it to the, you know, some of its parts. But this documentary really proves that you can't. In much the same way, history proves that you can't understand it just by picking up a book and reading it. You know, you need context. You need perspective. You need to be curious.

So that's me teeing it back to you because I know I've been on the road, man. Not with a band like that, but I've been on the road for a long time. How much of the dead space do you fill with history books? A lot. Recently, I mean, a whole lot. Always looking ahead to the next project. Well, actually, I'm still spending time with John Quincy Adams. But I'm also working on a couple ideas, like trying to flesh out these ideas.

So anyway, let me show you this. I was on the road for 10 days. I got back on Sunday. This was the first seven days of being on the road. And this, I'm showing a book with sticky notes full of sticky notes. That if I can get someone to buy it, buy the idea, so to speak, meaning support me making it. This could be a series, right? and this is a book that I digested in a week and I outlined in a week and look.

What's the book? I don't know what I want to say because if it's not allowed to say it. I'm allowed to say whatever I want, but it's like I want it to be a surprise if it becomes real, right? I'll tell you all there. Because if it's Hamilton, it's already been done. I hate to tell you. They put it to music and everything, Bob. And it's pretty good.

It ain't Hamilton. All right. It ain't Hamilton. Okay. Okay. But look, there's a history along with the Davies brothers and the Gallagher brothers and the Everly brothers of brothers who don't get along very well. There's also a perception and a stereotype of musicians who are on the road practicing their own self-destruction. And we don't do that.

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I'm doing what I can to help them. Learn more at skillsusa.org slash mic. That's skills usa.org slash mike. I'm talking skills, U.S. Skills, U.S.S.S.S. U.S.S.S. USA. And a lot of bands we meet and have known don't do that anymore. I'm sure they're out there. Believe me. The party is as eternal as time itself, right? Like Stephen Foster in the 19th century was probably, you know, I don't know anything about him, but he's probably partying up. So anyway, this is a healthy way to pass time that could be destructive. And instead is productive. It's productive.

Yeah. And I love it. I love it. I wrote a book on a plane, you know, because I, A, I got tired of staring at the back of the seat in front of me. and B, I realized that writing compresses time. Yeah. You know, in the same way a good book is, it's a time machine. You know, a good podcast is a time machine.

I love that. I tell people all the time, like, if you wrote one page a day, I mean, and then you can even, like, you can write a page a day for a year. And then if you want a 280 page book, you can even have a couple days in there to edit. Yeah, Mike. It's in all of us. It's in all of us. A lot of the work I do, so the kids, you know, well, your son's getting older. My son's, you know, 11.

He'll be 12 next week. So he doesn't go to bed as early as he used to. But, you know, Hallie's pretty consistent at the 9 o'clock hour. But 9 to midnight, a lot of nights, I turn off the TV and I'm working because that's quiet time. And that's time to work. And so, or it's the earliest part of the day. Like, where can you fit it? in. You know, Teddy Roosevelt, he would read if he had 10 minutes free, he had a book in his hand.

He was reading. All the time. All the time. I got to send you a link to a story I stumbled across. I'm not going to talk about it here either because I don't want a record for people who haven't heard it yet. But yeah, he was a, I think he was the first legit speed reader. Yeah. And how many books did he write? I mean, I mean, dozens. I was researching John Quincy Adams and I found he wrote a book about John Quintz. Of course he did. Yeah. And then read it in about 10 seconds.

Yeah. It's amazing. The strenuous life, Mike. They call it the strenuous life. Teddy used to get up and swim the Potomac. No, Adams got up and swim the Potom. I don't know if Teddy did it, but Adams did it. You know, that's a big river.

Adams would walk to the Capitol from his, he had a home on F Street and then he was president. He would time himself walking to the Capitol. I jogged it last week. We were in D.C. for three shows, and I stayed in D.C. And I love running the mall, right? And I ran from the Washington Monument down around the Lincoln Memorial, down to the Capitol, and then, like, halfway back, 45 minutes. Well, Adams would do that kind of stuff. Like, he wouldn't, I don't know if he'd run, but he would walk it in time himself.

Did people even run back then? Like, was there jogging? Was that even a thing? I don't know that they did, but they did like, they would walk. Sure. Teddy Roosevelt would have this thing where he would walk through Rock Creek Park, and the whole thing was that you couldn't, you had to go straight. So if something was in your way, you had to climb over it or go under it.

And I think he took like some cabinet guy with him or maybe even like a diplomat, a foreign diplomat. And the guy was like, what is this guy doing? Just go around the rock, brother. It's not. We're rivers trying to. to get to the ocean. What are we doing here? What else do you play beside the stand-up bass? Well, I think you should say, what do you play that you don't play really great? Because I play a lot

of things, but none as I can't play for my food like I can on the base. But I play the mandolin and the fiddle, the guitar, of course. I can, I understand the piano and I've tried to play the trumpet a few times. Wow. You don't see a lot of people jumping from the base to the trumpet. Yeah, from the mandolin to, hey, hand me that trumpet. You know, the whole rabbit hole thing, it goes to musical instruments to you. I think it's just ADD is what I have. Do you play the mandolin for the bumper music?

I do. Yeah, I figure. Oh, do you have one handy? Is there a mandolin there? Because that stupid thing is an ear one. Oh, thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't have it like right. I take it out of the case. is it. The bass is right there. Go ahead. Take the mandolinna? I want to hear the sting that's burned into my brain right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, do it. It's something, it's like... It reminds me a little bit of the Ken Burns thing, Ashcock and whatever that was. What is that, Bob? You remember the Ken Burns thing in the Civil War? He can't hear me. I think he's out of commission. There it is. I hear it.

I mean, he's apparently moving furniture because look. Well, that's how often he plays the mandolin. Yeah, I just keep it down here. I always keep my mandolin handy down a few flayed of steps at a lockbox. While we have this moment, I'm going to mention that the podcast that we're referring to is called Founding Sun. Now do we have a... have a pick. Do you need a pick?

Oh, here it is. I got one. And the documentary, the Judd-Apital documentary is called May It Last. Bob also does a podcast called The Road to Now, which I have not heard. But that's been going on for as long as the way I heard. We have had. Ken Burns as a guest and Doug Brinkley and Heather Cox Richardson, all these great historians. That is done with Ben Sawyer, who actually grew up with Scott and Seth.

No kidding. And he went to get his master's in Russian history at the University of Michigan. And he was a Fulbright scholar and spent some time over there in Putin's Russian. Actually, he was run out because when Clinton was the Secretary of State, Putin said it was all the scholars were coming to overthrow Russia, all the American scholars. And he was one of them. Wow. You know, you're not just, look, you're a, you're a, you're a, you're a, you're a, you're a, history fan who's like living history, keeping it alive, and making it, I knew of the Avid

Brothers, but I had never taken a deep dive. I think I heard him on Kimmel once. Yeah, we've been on Kimmel. Yeah. And I just feel like such an idiot. I mean, do you ever feel overwhelmed that there are too many good books that you're not going to get to? There's too much good music. You're not going to hear. There's too much stuff on Netflix and Amazon and God knows. where else, and I've never been a fear of missing out kind of guy, but I'm getting there. Yeah, I turned 52 recently, and man, I'm having too much fun. You know what I'm saying? I just, you know, I just, and it makes you want to work harder.

It's just, there's just not enough time. Twilight Zone, Burgess, Meredith, he breaks his glades. Oh, yes. Oh, my God, it's one of my favorite ones. Yep. Okay. So I haven't played this in so long. Can you hear this?

Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Oh, okay. It's such a simple progression, but it's... You know, I have that bass back there, and I've always wondered, is someone going to ever be like, hey, let me just hear something on the bass.

And so I've got it there, and, you know, I can walk over there and get it and play something, you know, and I thought you might be the guy. But mandolin and no one's ever done that either. Well, it turns out he's a mandolin guy. Well, say something interesting about the mandolin. I mean, how did that happen? Where did that come from? Oh, this?

Where did I desire it? Like, where did I be like, hey, I want to play that thing? Well, I mean, I just think I understand basically the history of the guitar and the bass and whatnot. But like, how the mandolin sneak into the party? Okay, so it's from Italy. I'm pretty sure about that. And look, we are an immigrant nation.

And we have the mandolin in bluegrass music because immigrants brought it here. Do you know where the banjo comes from? Tell me. Africa. It comes from Africa. No kidding. Wow. Yeah.

Really? Yes. Yes. So it's got to be enough room for all of us, guys. I mean, and how could we look at all the great things that are now American? right? We've made these things American. They've come from all over the world. That's what's so beautiful about America is that the old melting pot thing, like there's got to be a way. How do we think like so the people that want to come here now, they're not going to contribute and add to this beautiful mutt of a nation we are? And I say that because we all know mutts are the best dogs. It's the best dog I've ever. It's the only dogs have ever had. But you know what? The melting pot has to melt. It does. You know, we have to, it's such a, it's such a dichotomy. You need to honor your own past. You need to love your own history. You must be curious and even maybe reverential about where you come from. But if you really want to make it here, you've got to let a lot of it go. You've got to be part of the new thing. That's the thing that lets them. mandolin and the banjo and all these other great musical influences creep in. It's the same with

food, right? Like, why doesn't anybody talk about the cultural appropriation of the mandolin? Right. I'm sure somebody... There's no problem. At least there wasn't until I brought it up. Yeah, no. You just gave them an idea now. Now somebody's going to... Well, I mean, it's interesting because I'm sure someone's written a paper on it. And you know this. I imagine. You are, are so good at speaking for groups, for ideas that have been oversimplified and stereotyped in much of American culture. Does that make sense? Well, look, I mean, most everything I thought I knew about my own vocation turned out to be wrong. most everything I thought I believed about the nature of work.

You know, I've kind of changed my thinking on over the years. I've changed my taste in music, a great deal. And food. I agree with you that when it comes to the big ideas, we don't change much. But when it comes to our own skin, you didn't have to pick up the mandolin once upon a time. You weren't interested in it once upon a time.

And then you were. Right? And so I think that level of change is super interesting. And yeah, I can't really speak for anybody but myself. But you know, you play the cards you get, right? And next thing you know, you're in a band with a couple of brothers who are utterly unique. And then you're doing a podcast that I think is really important because it makes history interesting to people who otherwise might not give a damn, you know?

Thank you very much. So, no, I love what you're doing. And when's the next concert? Where can people see you? So we, the next run begins, I believe, near St. Louis. What we do is we do 10 days a month. Okay, so now we've been doing this for 21 years. And we have worked hard to find every different scheduling possibility.

You know what I'm talking about? Like you have a family and we want really good family home life. and we've decided 10 days on the road is that's the limit. That's where after 10 days, the wheels start coming off. You know, the relationships. Things get a little wobbly up there, man. And so we start out in actually Camdenton, Missouri at the Ozarks Amphitheater. And then we're at Rogers, Arkansas, at the Walmart Amphitheater in Oklahoma City Zoo.

After that, in Oklahoma, Peoria, Civic Center, Cedar Rapids, Iowa at the Alliance Energy Power. Center, Milwaukee at Summerfest, which is always a good time. And Euclair, Wisconsin at the Blue Ox Music Festival, and that will be our June run. And then we'll have a couple weeks off. I'll take Halle for her scans. And then when that's all good, we will meet back up at Red Rocks and do three nights at Red Rocks that we do every summer. What a life you're living. When are you in Milwaukee again? What's that exact date? Because I'm going to be in Milwaukee in a couple of weeks.

Milwaukee is the 23rd of June Friday. You're kidding me. I think I'm there. Come on out. We will make it easy in and easy out for you. I love it. I love it. You know what else I love?

We don't, obviously, as you've just experienced, there's not a lot of scripting with this thing. Conversation goes where it goes. But you started this off with a tall ship and your marriage. and your cell phone. Yeah. And as we were talking, I didn't bring it up, but it's like there were so many instances where it's like, it's really a conversation about navigation and trying to figure out where you are in the course

of your 53-year-old existence, you know, vis-a-vis your daughter, vis-a-vis your band, vis-a-vis the next project that you can't tell me about because it's super proprietary, vis-a-vis the current project, which we love. But I'm thinking of the amistat. Doesn't know where it is. These poor slaves are like, take us back home. And these guys say, oh, yeah, we'll take you back home. And they take them dead opposite direction.

And they don't know. They're on a tall ship. And they don't know where they are. And they don't have that fancy device tied into satellites that let you triangulate your position down to a square foot. They don't have any of that. Right. And so they wind up about as far from home as they could be. and thanks to a guy named John Quincy Adams, who finally comes into his own, blah, blah, blah, and off we go.

In the end, man, it's a tall ship, it's a mandolin, and it's a quest to figure out where in the world we're headed. I like where you're going, man. Thank you so much. Was it fun putting the podcast together, the whole school experience? It was amazing. First of all, the people, we worked with Jessica and this guy, James Morrison. so they were the two producers I worked with every day. They were incredible.

Virginia was great. Patrick Warburton. Patrick Warburton, yeah, who's who I met through St. Jude, who is one of the most incredible biggest St. Jude supporters out there. Really? I know that. Friends with the guy named Rick Shadyak, who's the CEO of Alsack, which is the fundraising arm.

Between us, we almost had Michael Chickles. and he couldn't do it or he wouldn't do it. And I was telling we were there, it was November, we were at St. Jude for Halley Scans, and I was telling Rick about this. And he's like, I need to introduce you to Patrick Warburton. And he just connected me by text. And Patrick's like, yeah, I'll do it. You know, it's so funny, man.

People look at careers. I guess it's just greener grass or whatever. but I remember watching him on Seinfeld and thinking, God, this guy's going to have a great career. Yeah. Puddy was such a great character. And sure enough, you know, the tick, he did all sorts of stuff. And then part of when I realized that I had gotten pretty good cards was I got a call from

his people. And he wanted to do sort of a sideways show for Discovery. He wanted to go through Napa with me. Oh, wow. Just drinking and screwing off. He was just, he was so fascinated by the idea, you know, because Dirty Jobs kind of came out of the last writer's strike. And there was just nothing else to do. And I was in the right place, the right time. And so I think he was just looking at that as a, like you're kidding me. Like you can go out, like a couple of dudes can just go out into the world with no script and a small crew and just come back with a TV show. Like, is that even possible?

He was so enamored of that. at a time when I was enamored of gosh, you know, I mean, it just seems like a sitcom would be a great thing to do. Yeah. You know, it just seems like that would be a, and here we are like looking at each other going. Did you guys do it? We never even met. Wow. Because at that point, I was up to my neck in it and, no, I couldn't get away from the schedule.

You don't seem like you take to downtime too well. You know, no, not really. But look, I think it's like you. You said in the beginning of this, you're tired, you know, but you're also living your best life. Yeah. You know. Oh, yeah. I mean, what matters most, right?

Your family, your music and your passion for history. If my family is good. Check, check, check. I can take on the world. If my wife is good and my kids are good, I can take on the world. If they're not good, I can't lift a pebble, you know? I'm not a compartmentalizer. I'm a when things are good let's rock let's do it when things are not good let's hunker down and

and just take care of business so things are good if you see me I tell my friends they say how is how is howie doing I say if you see me we are great that's terrific we're going to record a preamble for this right now after you sign off I'll leave you with this the other idea which I think is this moment In our history, if something is parallel, 1856. A series about that year. That year is, it's kind of when everything was kind of melting down. When we weren't coming back.

Is that the contentious election? So it's the first year of the Republican Party, and that was the first sectional party. And so John Charles Fremont was the candidate. No one wanted to do it. and they pick out Fremont, who was known as the Pathfinder. He surveyed for the military all over the country. He surveyed all the out west. And he was a celebrity.

And his wife was Jesse Benton, Fremont, Thomas Hart Benton's daughter. They were like a celebrity couple. And it's just a really interesting story and really interesting year. Like that year, it's when Charles Sumner is caned on the floor of the Senate. Yeah. It's when bleeding Kansas happens. It's when John Brown decapitates plantation owners in Kansas. So it's a very violent time.

I was at the Willard. I stayed at the Willard last week. There was a California congressman who showed up at the Willard Hotel to have breakfast in 1856. And they say, sir, it's 11 o'clock. We stopped serving at 10.30. We've all been there, right? well, the waiter was Irish immigrant, and he shot him and killed him. And the prosecuting district attorney was Philip Barton Key.

And Key was seen having dinner with the California congressman before the trial, and the guy gets acquitted. It's just a crazy, you can't make the stuff up. You're right. 56, 57, hell of a time. That's not talking about trying to get into Cuba. Like, we wanted Cuba back then and crazy stuff. All right, Mike. Well, thank you so much for your interest.

Real pleasure, ma'am. And call me if you want to come to the show and any show, anywhere. I will. Yeah, I'd love to. We'll make it easy for you. Okay, thanks. All right. This is good.

Good stuff. All right. Take care. I really appreciate it. Take good care, man. See you. If you leave some stars, could you make it five? And before you go, could you please subscribe?

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