This Past Weekend - #630 - Stephen Wilson Jr.

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

Stephen Wilson Jr. is a musician and songwriter originally from southern Indiana. He was recently nominated for “New Artist of the Year” at the CMAs and his new single “Gary” is out now.  Stephen joins Theo to talk about memories from the midwest growing up, his dad’s legacy as a boxer and man, and why it’s never too late to change your own story.  Stephen Wilson Jr.: https://www.instagram.com/stephen.wilson.jr/  ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ  Prize Picks: Prize Picks: Go to https://prizepicks.onelink.me/ivHR/THEO and use code THEO to get $50 in lineups when you play your first $5 lineup! Play Responsibly.  Moonpay: Head over to https://www.moonpay.com/theo  to sign up  Shopify: Go to http://shopify.com/theo to get started. Valor Recovery: To learn more about Valor Recovery please visit them at https://valorrecoverycoaching.com/  or email them at [e-mail] Perplexity AI: Ask anything at https://pplx.ai/theo and download their new web browser Comet at https://comet.perplexity.ai/ ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [e-mail] Hit the Hotline: [phone] Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/  Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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originally by way of southern indiana he's got that voice in him he's got that power in him he's got it he's got it he has a new single gary that's out now and sold out tour in the spring, I'm thankful to finally get to sit down with Mr. Stephen Wilson, Jr. Man, I'm just, I'm such a fan of yours on all levels, your podcast and your comedy and your humanity and your humanity. So, yeah, it's an honor to be here. I appreciate it. Stephen Wilson, Jr., thank you so much. Thank you, it's really cool.

I think this is one of those moments where I feel, yeah, like, just so lucky that I get to, that some of this job has ended up like this, like getting to talk to people that, that, yeah, some people would love to sit down with, you know. So thanks so much, man. I appreciate it. You have, you just had a pretty decent run at the CMAs this year. Yeah, it was a, you know, I've. Were you new artists of the year?

Yes, I was nominated for new artist of the year, which blew my mind. And did you win a red clay strays won who? I got a rock top one. Zach top one. Very well deserved. That man has had a big year, and I'm a big fan of his. And I was very happy for him. And I was really rooting for everybody.

But myself, I didn't really think I even had a prayer's chance in hell of winning. But I was just like honestly being nominated was a, huge win for me because you know i wasn't supposed to be there on paper you know like there's a lot of there's a lot of things that like i contradict and um so just being there you know it meant a lot just to be out there and it was really wild when i remember when they said my name and like it didn't feel like that's somebody else oh yeah that's not me that's like a oh for sure well do you think of yourself as country music? I do. Yeah. I am a country boy. I grew up in the country. So I am very country just by

culture. And I cannot help but write country songs. I grew up listening to country music and classic rock. I grew up in body shops and it was all classic rock and country music, old school and 90s. And so that was kind of my pedigree, my listening. pedigree and then I grew up very country very agrarian kind of hunting for our own food and I ate a lot of squirrels growing up and rabbits and yeah we just grew up very country wasn't trendy at all either it was like just the means of survival my dad was raising three kids on his own and so he just went out and killed food it was a lot cheaper than buying it at their grocery store like you know one slug one deer slug could feed you

for like three months so like that's the way he looked at it oh there's a beautiful group right there you guys kids huh that's my dad and his three little ones and that's that's me that uh that you on the bottom left there kind of the middle yeah in the middle yeah and who's that dime on his lap huh and i mean that respectfully young son's a child my who's that beautiful young lady yeah that's my little sister lacy jay lacy jay yeah named after Lacey J Dalton and another country singer and But yeah, she's his little girl, and she is beautiful, and she's a beautiful person in general. She's really kept our whole family, like me and my brother right there were like Irish twins.

We're only like a year and a few months apart. So we were like, we grew up beating the hell out of each other. We were both boxers. My dad right there in this picture, he had just won, you know, the Golden Gloves for like the third or fourth time in a row. And, you know, he was probably just running over to, like, Olin Mills or somewhere at Walmart and grabbing this picture real quick. So, just so, like, just that there's proof that we existed and proof that he did this. And I always find it while that he had time to even snap that.

Snap that picture amidst his life. It was so crazy at the time. And for a dad to put that together, that didn't, you know, that wasn't really the dad world. So he was a single dad raising you guys? Yeah, he was driving a bus in the morning. morning and then working at a body shop and training to be a boxer he he was wanting to be a pro boxer but a lot of things you know he had to really kind of focus on being a dad and kind of had to put his boxing career because he really had a very promising career he did him and so a lot of my

dreams i live kind of you know for him and myself but because he put a lot of his dreams on the back burner to raise me like and but he also created me so like he like he kind of had to do that if we're right you know like so but you know a lot of people don't take that responsibility and when i see that picture uh i have like a like you said a memory um we either got the day he's got great dimples or somebody caught him with two good no yeah he's got great dimples yeah he does my little sister has the same ones and uh but yeah i i see that guy right there and about a year from that picture he would have been curling my little sister's hair and getting her ready for kindergarten and um and even though his eyes were swollen shut

up from sparring the night before i've like distinct memories of him like getting her ready for school and being like a dad to a very young little girl like and like you know crimping her hair and curling it and um you know being being a dad also doing feminine things like because there was no one to do the feminine thing so he was like oh i got to be dad and he was really good and he knew how to do the dude the dad dude part like me and my brother boxing every night And we were hunting and fishing and doing all the dude things. But he had also had to be a dad to a little girl that was, like, the light of his life. Wow.

That was, like, quite the responsibility. And I look back on that. And I have, like I said, just such a distinct memory of him curling her hair, like, while morning cartoons are playing right before we got on the school bus. And, yeah, he was quite the dude. What was his name? Stephen Wilson. Oh, he was senior. Yes.

He just never knows. sometimes they'll throw a junior on somebody just because they don't know what's going on. Yeah, I know. Or they're just a NASCAR fan. They'll tack it on to the back of their kid's name. Yeah, like a donkey tail that he's put it on there, like a junior. Like, yeah, we'll pin the tail on this child, you know. No, I'm very much a junior.

It's very much a thing in boxing, especially. Like, you know, I joke around that, you know, my, you know, my dad, you know, he was named after a martyr. the Bible. My grandmother named him after a guy that was, had rocks thrown at him until he died in the Bible. Stephen with a pH, by the way, which makes a lot of sense because I'm pretty sure my dad was stoned when I was born. That's the joke. Oh, the pH level of his brain was probably weed, probably then. It might have been plus 40 then. Depends on if he was on some serious gas or not. He did like perhaps the, oh, you had to back then. The country cabbage. The story of Stephen from the Bible.

Stephen the first Christian martyr of the first Christian martyr was stone to death outside Jerusalem for his faith as described in Acts 7 of the Bible his executioners including a young Saul through rocks at him after he testified about Jesus.

Yep. Why did Saul not want him to testify him? Did he not believe him or did you just not want him sharing the truth? Well, Saul at the time, this is pre-Paul because Saul turned into Paul once he saw Christ

like the Spirit of Christ appeared before him. And that's when he became Paul. But at that point, Saul was very much a, like, a figure of, of the Jewish religion. Like, he was a very high-ranking Jewish official. So, like, he was kind of, you know, like a high-ranking individual. And so he was really, in his mind at that time, probably just doing his job, you know, not really knowing why he was doing it.

But then he, you know, he had very much a come to Jesus. moment no no pun intended yeah that's when he became Paul and he wrote literally probably two-thirds of the the New Testament or at least a lot of it yeah this of it at least this says here it says that and we use perplexity AI and it says before his conversion Saul was a zealous phariseic yeah he's a Pharisee pharisee was a was a zealous Pharisee who believed followers of Jesus were dangerous heretics so from his perspective Stevens preaching against their a rejection of Jesus and his criticism of their misuse of the temple was blasphemous and

deserved death under the understanding of the law. That zeal led him to participate by giving approval and overseeing the execution, which he later remembered with deep sorrow when he became the Apostle Paul. Wow. Yeah. Gosh, dude. That's, I mean, that's got to be a lot to carry. Because if Stephen was the first Christian martyr and you had him stoned because your faith wasn't there yet. And then to look back through a different perspective. Not much longer after that for him to be like, oh, now I'm preaching the same gospel without rocks being thrown at me. And now that has to be quite the thing to come to terms with. And I think that's what motivated him to write, you know, so many epistles of the New Testament and became such a huge figure of the New Testament.

There's a lot of books that they believe were written by Paul, like the book of Hebrews, there's like no. author but they believe even he wrote like books that nobody has any author too like they just they can identify his style of writing and be like it had to be wow so yeah people love your style of writing man speaking i grew up very religious that's why i talk about i grew up in a pentecostal nazarene kind of church a lot of holy rolling and i read a lot of the bible well yeah i just started going to a bible study that's the first time i've ever been to a bible study in my life and so um it's been interesting to start to just learn about different characters from the bible and just different stories and stuff so uh yeah i'm just glad that we even got to talk

about that and yeah and that's how your father was named from stephen i didn't know that story now or remember it yeah so that's pretty cool um what was that yeah the church you went to uh because you're from the midwest you're from indiana yeah i'm from where i'm from southern indiana kentuck kentuckianna they call that area like just north of louisville kentucky just close to where trevins from and um okay that's our producer i would say that's where the midwest and the south kind of chest bump or shake hands it is literally a collision of two cultures so people have southern accents and watch nascar but they also put noodles in their chili which is a very midwestern thing so yeah there it is uh jackson county indiana right there

in the southern part oh yeah the midwest they'll starch up a protein in a second they don't give it dang brother they'll put a starch right in the middle of a protein yeah that That's how they are there. They love that. I mean, I would go. It's long winters. Yes. It's cold.

You need them starches. Oh, yeah. I mean, I would go. We used to go to the AC. It was an apostolic Christian church with my grandparents and some of their neighbors. And it was in Illinois, like in pretty much southern Illinois. And that was just part of the culture. Like people would eat their dessert at the beginning of dinner sometimes.

So they made sure they got their dessert in. Like it was just kind of some of that culture. Yeah, you don't want to miss that. I get too full. I'm getting too excited on mashed potatoes. And they're like, I ain't got nothing. It was almost a shame.

If you couldn't make, if you didn't have space available in your body for a beautiful dessert somebody had made, you almost felt a bit of shamed in a way. Yeah. And you should be. I think how much work was put into that cobbler compared to those mashed potatoes.

Like you, you ate the like the easy stuff. Oh, and sometimes you'd have somebody, you know, you'd have such skilled labor in that or you'd have a real cobbler making the cobbler. You'd have a damn shoelace

going through a, going through a peach. you know, you'd be in there. Some bootlaced cobbler. Yeah, you'd find, yeah. You'd find half a soul in, you know, you'd be like, oh, is this, is this crust or is this, you know, part of an 11 and a half? Yeah, what is this, cobbler?

Solace. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like, no, not so much. He's got real heels in the corner, you know? It was just, but there was so much value. I remember in my grandmother's town on cooking and on having people over for meals. Just that Midwestern culture, you know, on hard work. And religion was a big part of it.

You know, even their neighbors, if my grandparents couldn't take us to church, their neighbors would offer, we'll take them to church, you know. And we'd go and just get to see what some of the different churches were like. And that was one of the bigger religions in the area was apostolic Christian over there. Do you see any exorcisms or any speaking in tongues or movements of the spirit? Let me think. No, they had good donuts. They braided their hair.

The women did like one big braid. They didn't show a lot. You know, it was very kind of covered up. with some of the female culture. They braid their donuts? They did have those one. Yeah. What is that one that's braided?

I don't know. It's, I don't know what it's called. I don't love it. I don't either. Yeah. It's too much bread, and I don't think there's filling in it. You think there is when you're a kid. It's very deceiving.

Twisted donut. No, there's a word for it. And it's, what is that? Creller was one that I loved. But I don't think this was a Creller. Well, Creller often made from show pastry, French Creller. or Yisto with the distinctive twisted shape on maybe it was a Kreller yeah maybe it was but yeah there's something else though it looked good as a kid but it was it was it was

yeah it was always like oh I want that and then you would eat it and you're like man there wasn't trash yeah I should have went with that Bavarian cream yeah or I should have went with the one with the frosting on it you know but we had a beautiful time yeah I didn't meet any there was no seanceery really I do remember there was a mentally handicapped fellow who said he could drive and he was a driver's ed instructor and he wasn't. He was just, you know, and some people believe he was mentally handicapped. Some were like he's possessed by the devil. I'm like, well, he's not possessed by like a devil who just, you know, is sitting around us picking his nose and just, you know, he was just a little bit

off, this dude named Brandon. And he was awesome, actually. He was kind of this special guy between an adult and a kid and he never left that zone, you know, so there was something kind of very approachal to him about kids. Because he was bigger than a little. He was. He was bigger than us, but he was just like us. And he taught me how to, he said he could drive, and we drove right into a snowbank, and the police came and everything. But it was just exciting, though. He was a liar.

Yeah, he was a good place for him to be at church. He was a Bears fan. I think it was a tough time for everybody. That's, I mean, I got to say, I saw quite a few demon possessed Brandon's where I grew up. I saw a lot of Brandon's get demons cast out of them. Really? So you would see that at your church? Yeah. And what was that kind of like?

Because someplace that's a part of a culture, and I believe that, I believe in that type of stuff. Do you believe in it? I do. You know, I have a, you know, I've tried to deconstruct a lot of that through, because I have a science background. I've had to really try to understand a lot of that and understand what is real and what is not. But there was a lot of it that was 100% real, and there was a lot of it that was 100% not. and uh you know i believe there's theatrics but i also believe you know god is everywhere and i believe god did show up in those places just like god will show up in any place um but yeah i did see a lot of you know grown-ass drywall dudes get like demons cast out of them before lunch and i'd be like sitting there with half a pop tart in my stomach watching this dude literally like throwing dudes around

and, like, exhibiting some superhuman strength. Oh, they're popping the tart right out of that dude. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? That's the original Pop-Tart. Dude is a damn exorcism. Yeah, he just created the original Pop-Tard.

That cherry-flavored pop-tart was from a demon exorcism. That's why it's red. Yeah, you just know they could have gone with a lot darker flavors, but they're like, let's make this available to children. But, dude, a Pop-Tarts and Exorcism, shit, I'm there, dude. I sit on your loud. Speaking in tongues, I actually went, We, you know, some, you know, in our town, like, an evangelist could, like, show up to your church and, like, a traveling evangelist and be like, we're having revival here this week.

Oh, yeah. And literally the church would shut down and be like, we're having revival, y'all. This is what we're doing. And the whole week would be a revival just because this dude showed up and said, God told me to have a revival here. And they would have a huge, like, big tent revival. No way. Absolutely. And it's always been my dream to be a part of something like that.

No, I just. The leap of faith was my favorite movie growing up. Dude, that movie changed my life. It's one of the greatest movies ever made. Literally changed my life. Oh, my gosh. I'm so glad you know about that movie. Like, very few people I've been able to talk to about that movie.

Because it had one of the most profound impacts on me. Really? As a kid, just because of how I grew up in the music business and seeing performance and theatrics and, you know, where is God and where isn't God? And that movie is just brilliantly done. But I remember I went up, this dude showed up. And he said, tonight everybody's getting slain in the spirit.

You come up, you're getting slain. And I don't know if you know what slain means. Like, you stand up there and the dude hit you and you fall down and you're just out for however long. And everybody lined up. And I was like, I'm getting slain tonight. I've never been slain. That's that freaking religious percassette right there. Yeah, I would, I wanted it bad.

And he's just knocking people over the left and right. Boom, boom, boom. I'd seen him go down. It's like, he's coming to me. No way. got to me and he started speaking in tongues and i remember he tapped me right in the forehead boom like that i was like that was kind of hard and i was like training for the golden gloves at that time so i was like a little bit like what's up like he just like hit me right in a forehead with his

fingers yeah and then he started you know it didn't work like it didn't take and so he did it again even harder and i was like kind of like mad about it at that point because it actually kind of hurt I was like, is this dude trying to knock me out? Yeah. Or, like, he's trying to slay me in the spirit. And anyway, he just... Yeah, let's look at the judge's cards. And I'm just, like, getting hit in the forehead by him, and then he just moved on.

It was one of the most heartbreaking things. He went to the next guy and knocked him out, the next guy down, down. Were you being defiant, do you think? I don't know. I thought, like, man, I guess I don't believe. Am I, did I, like, snap out of it? Was I, you know, was I not in the moment? I didn't really know what to think because I was, like, a 19-year-old kid just trying.

trying to feel God and try to get closer to God, and everybody seemed to be doing that. And what was wild is, like, he knocked everybody up, and there was all these bodies all over the floor. People, like, putting modesty cloths all over them and stuff, and they're just out there asleep. So I had to, like, walk all over all these bodies to get back to my... You're like, oh. Yeah, to my pew. And it's kind of embarrassing. It's almost the walk of shame at church.

It was like... It was the most shameful walk I've ever taken at church. Oh, I guess I'm not. I guess I'm not, and what really made me laugh, or at least kind of help break me out of it. Missing the spirit. Yes. I remember thinking like,

what if I step on, because everybody had their hands out just kind of laid out. Right. What if I step on someone's hand? Wake him up. Will I, like, snap them out of it and then be like, ah, and then they'll go back in or would they be out? Like, oh, you stepped on my hand and now I'm no longer slain.

I was like, how did. Or like Stephen, the center, you know, old Stephen Wilson, Jr., who can't even get the dark arts exercised out of him. Is there you're waking up people who are doing well. Breaking fingers. with his steel-toed boots, shamefully walking back to his pew.

I never thought about the walk of shame at church. What is a modesty cloth? Well, like sometimes a lady would get slain and she's wearing a skirt. You know, it's a Pentecostal church and they cover and make sure like... Oh, that's a lot of skirt, do we used to call them skirtings because they were so long, you know?

And some of them would be actual curtains that they had taken off of a window somewhere. Some of them you'd even see like that stick you know the stick that's on the edge of a curtain that you can like if you turn it it'll go up some of them even have those yeah you're just sitting over there but they get through yeah if you're trying to get a pin you got to spend that thing for a long time they got blinds underneath yeah they got blinds those vertical blinds really yeah it cure you from blindness that's that's pretty funny dude thinking about something like that we thinking about something that's funny

together with somebody is something that's awesome dude yeah it was like it helped me get through it like the because like you said there was a shamefulness to it but it actually was kind of funny when i so they put that modesty blanket on them there's a modesty cloth that's good for that yeah good for that that at least yeah because there's some guys some lurkers that would just be up there yeah you never know and and like it like i said in that those churches like nothing you didn't even show below the knee so like if if your skirt when it started to show some knee they better get a cloth over that oh yeah yeah boy those oh oh yeah boy those oh oh Oh, I remember being young and just, God, I was kind of like a, I guess like a little bit of a peeping time or whatever.

I was like visually stimulated, I called it, and had a step stool. But I remember for Christmas when I wanted a ladder. My mom was like, what do you want a ladder for? Like, why do you want this little ladder? And I wanted to go. I'd go watch people and just watch in their houses. And I wasn't always looking for perverse stuff. I was just looking.

I liked watching people live, right? Like, I think I hated being at our house. like it was like it wasn't fun it was just painful kind of a lot and it was like always like aggressive and um defensive like the second you around you had to be defensive and so I would go watch as other people live like watch somebody just be you know or just watch some dad sit there in a chair some mom make something or some kid just you know like usually is like the living room or something I wouldn't getting real weird but But I love that kind of stuff, man.

I love just kind of absorbing how other people operated. That kind of stuff was interesting. You're a OG people watcher. Yeah, I was a bit of a, yeah. I mean, that's, I mean, if. Get your ladder together, you know? Yeah, but get half a Pop-Tart in you and get over there and just see what the. I find comedians and songwriters in general are just like, they're people watchers.

And then they watch so much people that they end up, these narratives start to show up. And so you were probably just harnessing your skills for what was to come. Yeah, I think sometimes, yeah, you look back in your life and you're like, oh, so much of that was to, was ammo to provide something. Yeah. You already know it, but you should be reminded that prize picks is America's number one sports picks app. The app is really easy to use to create a player lineup. all you have to do is pick more or less on a few player stats. That's it.

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And then also that some dads will make sacrifices like you're saying, like, you know, and it wasn't like it was his choice that he made, you know, it wasn't like a sacrifice. But sometimes even with choices, then come sacrifices that you don't see. And then you have to make another choice then as to what do I do here. But that like even by giving birth to a son, by having an offspring, you were creating something that can go the next leg, almost like it's one of those races where they pass the baton. What is that called? Yeah, I think a baton race. Yeah, a baton race. and yeah so yeah

it's not hard as hard as it seems I'm not sure it may not be called that it may be something something way more complex there is a baton a relay race

relay race um but it's like I can this is as far as I can get and let me put this into you but then it's interesting as the next runner as the next generation is

what do I like how much do I owe to this previous generation to carry on their dream do I owe anything you know what does it mean to be a son? Like all those things kind of were popping into my head as you were saying that. Wow. A generational relay race is not something I've put, you know, to thought regarding all that,

but that is very, very accurate observation there. Because when you see a relay race, like the first runner or whatever, the runner before you, the runners before you, like, dictate how fast you're going to run and they dictate your position in the race. Yeah. So, like, if they're running with everything they got, well, then you're only, like, doing a disservice to their effort by not running with everything you got. Right. And so, yeah, that baton becomes something bigger than just this thing you're holding in your hand.

It's like the sum of all their efforts. Yeah. And, you know. Yeah, and I think we used to hear a lot more. I think when families, and this is a hypothetical, but when families seemed closer and we needed more, more. entertainment from our fathers and forefathers. And we got lore passed down and family history. When there was more storytelling,

when you couldn't get as much storytelling from like phones and television and stuff as we can in the past few generations, but when it came from like those the predecessors of ours and our forefathers and mothers, that that kind of stuff, it like beat inside of us like a drum, you know?

Yeah, what kind of did you feel a pressure? Like, and did something have your father passed away? Yeah, he passed away. years ago at the age of 59 and it happened yeah he was very young and it was a sudden thing and it was was he sick yeah well he had like this pulmonary fibrosis thing that was starting but he ended up dying of a pulmonary embolism like a blood clot in his lungs and so yeah it was it was a very sudden thing that I don't think anybody really expected and he was living in Indiana he was

in southern indiana and um he was you know he was you know doing quite well and like you know everything kind of changed in about six months and then um he you know suddenly this this imbalism showed up and i tried to get there because he it was his his body was like shutting down and what do you mean so an embolism can you bring it up just so i know trevin sorry to interrupt you stephen no i don't i just like sometimes i've let information fly and i don't know what it is an embolism. A pulmonary embolism is a blood clot that travels to and blocks an artery in the lungs, cutting off normal blood flow and oxygen exchange and creating a potentially life-threatening emergency. So had this been happening for a while and then it got bad?

Yeah. And so he had had some, obviously, some things going on that he never knew what was happening. And then, yeah, it got to that life-threatening emergency point. And then there is a point where they can only do so much. And, you know, he was a bit of a cowboy and, you know, those kind of classic dudes that don't want to go to the doctor and all tough it out kind of thing. I'm sure there was a lot of that mentality going into it. Also, there was poor health care, you know, that's he was a victim of the American health care system, too, in that regard. I won't get into all that. But, yeah, like, that was a big part of it. We've talked about that a lot over the years.

It's a nightmare and the stress they put people through trying to deal. with their own taking care of themselves it's like yeah it's a nightmare especially at his age at 59 he was starting to feel like oh you're just like a forgotten human they don't you know like you know they don't really want to take care of you they want to do everything but that like you got to fight tooth and nail to take care of yourself in that at least where he was at that time and yeah i i got a a really um panicked call from my sister that morning and that morning and and i got a i got a really um panicked call from my sister that morning said you need to get here like now like dad is very sick and we don't know what's happening and they rushed him to the emergency room and um i jumped in my car and sped up there

and i said goodbye to him in the middle of kentucky on the side of i 65 on an iPhone 8 on the side of a highway and um pulled over to make it quieter yeah and just so i didn't lose signal i was so worried that because you know the middle of kentucky is the middle nowhere and like what if i dropped the call like yeah and um you know there was so i just pulled over just i mean it was insane i just the the sound of like semis flying by me like 90 miles an hour but literally being in a i felt like i was in a bubble like not like the world was like the world stopped around me in that little car like a semi could have taken the side of that car off, I wouldn't even had known it or, you know, I would have just, I was in a state of absolute

shock and horror. It was a very traumatizing experience. And you were on a FaceTime call? No, I was just on a video, or a normal phone call. Was he able to speak to you? He was, and he, uh, did he know that it could be like his last moment? He knew, he was bothering you by asking this? No, I talk about it a lot on stage. I kind of relive it every night. And that's been a challenge for me, like mentally kind of, but it's been, but it's also been, like, the beautiful part of unpacking trauma and grief because, you know, I'm not, like, our music, like, really, um, it finds the grieving. And I think it's, it's important for me to grieve as well. Um, like, I, I, I go through grief every night. And, uh, but, you know, um, he was such a gang. in that moment he knew he had maybe 90 seconds left on his earth he knew he was going not just going but going fast he even told me he's like i'm going stephen and uh um sorry but yeah he was uh he was so calm about it um he said everything's going to be okay oh that was his first thing he said

like such a dad thing to say and um and he said write a good song for me stephen and he said i love you i love you i love you i love you four times and he wanted you to know for sure yeah like he wanted there to be no doubt and uh so i say it more than once all the time now it's because i from that experience i kind of realize that people are counting and uh i i was counting and um and and and and and And it was weird, like on that last I love you, it's almost like his voice got quieter. Like he was literally being pulled, like God was snatching him from the universe in that last I love you. Wow. And he was gone 30 seconds later.

And that was it. I was the last person he spoke to. And I'm really grateful that I got to speak to him. And in that moment, in that car, I was so angry. at God. I was so angry at him, even, my dad. I was like, how dare you die on me like this? Like that's, it wasn't supposed to happen. Like none of it was supposed to happen like that. Like I was under the impression he was invincible, first of all. And he was just so young and he was just such a, you know, just such a lively, such a bright light. So it just didn't seem possible. And

And even to people in my hometown, they were in disbelief when he died. It was like, because his life force was so big that, like, people were in denials. Like, that's impossible. There's no way he could be dead. Like, and I was like, no, he really is. And it was a tough thing to really come to terms with. But with any great reaction or any, like, chemical reaction, there is a catalyst. And I have to say everything, the reason I'm here

and the reason I'm anywhere right now is because of that conversation. It was, you know, you have a product and a reactant and then there's a catalyst. And that conversation is what catalyzed my whole career. Really? Yeah. That write a good song for me, Stephen.

Oh. I was like a lifetime's, worth of jet fuel for me to charge across the galaxy and do everything I could to try and keep him alive to try and just tell the world about him that you know carry out his wish yeah I mean what and what I found out is like like carrying out his wish and um and keeping him alive was keeping so many other people that other folks have lost other humans have lost alive he was resurrecting other people at the same time and these people were coming to shows with this um with this bounty of love that had no place to go and that's what grief is essentially and uh and i gave

them you know you know these songs have given them a home for at least maybe three and a half for four minutes and oh yeah and that's been um that's really been the charge of all of this that's been um the mission statement is um you know at the very beginning was just keep dad alive keep him alive at all costs and you know like kind of a psychotic denial for the first couple years that he was even gone i was like no he's he's still around and i and i don't a lot of times i felt them on my shoulders like a little kid. It was really weird. It was like this weird reversal of roles.

Well, now that he's free, he kind of could do as he wants, you know? He could be on your shoulders. Yeah, he would show up like that. And the reason why I play this song, Stand By Me, is literally two weeks after he died, I was scheduled to play this songwriter festival on Deadwood, South Dakota. And it's in the Black Hills, and it's a very spiritually charged area, just in general. Yeah, for sure it is. And the guy that runs that says, you don't have to play any music.

I know you're in a bad, bad spot. I hadn't slept in a week. And he's like, just come here and, you know, see what happens. You know, just be around people like, there's nothing but love for you here. And we know you've gone through it. And at the end of the festival, they asked, you know, all the writers and stuff there, if you wanted to play a cover, what's your favorite cover that you love? and they did this big finale.

I'd been, for some reason, for about a year prior to my dad's death, I'd been singing this song Stand By Me in my living room, the exact way I play it now. It just popped in your head to come in, it just kind of came into you? Yeah, and like for some reason I was, that song has haunted me my whole life because of the movie Stand By Me. Oh, for sure. Yeah, that's a big part of a lot of people's, that movie was huge in people's lives

for so many little moments. Yeah, like I very much saw myself in the kid on the left, The Gordie La Chance, no. Oh, what was his name, Will Wheaton, like the writer, the writer that was trying to find a voice, the nerdy little writer kid on the left. Yeah. And that song, like, was threaded so brilliantly throughout that film, and it's obviously the title. But because of that movie, which is also a Stephen King story, that movie is based off a Stephen King novella called The Body. So, you know, it was obviously a very haunting and dark theme.

but that song really haunted me because of that movie and I just started playing it I was like trying to I don't know kind of deconstruct it try to process it in a different way and when my dad died fast forward to Deadwood all I could play was stand by me

and I started playing it and I'd really never played it for anybody like that and the whole place like just went crazy and at that point I was not an artist I'd just quit my job as a scientist. I'd just, I've been a published writer for maybe two years at that point, just trying to get other artists to sing my songs. And I never really saw myself as an artist, even though my dad did,

like he would always be like, why don't you just sing these songs? You sound great singing him, but I would always argue with him. Like, no, I don't do that. I write him. Someone else sings him. But when I went up there to sing Stand By Me, I swear to God, he was like on my shoulders like a little kid. and i got so addicted to that feeling again

like because he i mean he was there he showed up and i i truly believe he showed up at bridgestone at the cms like he he did he showed up that night and uh oh i bet he was so proud of you do you feel like he's proud of you uh yeah i think so yeah he was so proud on me before he died before any of this happened and um i think yeah he would be very proud um I've been trying to make him proud my whole life

but what did he said write a song for me or make us what did he say sorry I'm fucking leaking over here no man I leak all the time I yeah dude I listen to stuff that makes me cry all the time because I think I'm just full of tears and I got to get these bitches out even though I'm dehydrated half the time so I'm like I don't even know what's going on here dude no it's good for you like when my dad died

I swear all I did was cry for two years like it's all I did um yeah you gotta get it out if you have if you can find the tears find them like right now i i can't find them yeah i mean even though i i i get emotional don't be wrong but yeah sometimes you have tears and sometimes you don't it's like almost like seasons you know it's almost like an ocean sometimes it comes up on the shore and sometimes it's out to sea you know even though it's you know it lives right yeah so it's like um and especially i think people that have had like a lot of things in their life that have happened that haven't been processed um

Um, you know, it takes a long time and I think I've gotten grateful in my life over, over, over time where there, if I find something that helps me process, I'll sit there and process it. My brother says a lot of times he's like, yeah, getting rid of grief and like, like trauma, like that old stuff and people use trauma as a buzzword, but getting rid of grief and stuff from the past, he's like, it's like taking pennies out of a bathtub one at a time. He's like, you know, it just, it takes a long time and it's slow and it's just kind of arduous work. But you just be grateful that it can kind of happen over time. He said, make a good song for me? Write a good song for me. Right a good song for me. Yeah, because he knew that's what I was, that's all I could think about. That's the baton, man, that's the baton. Yeah, he used to come to my, like, all my shows, when I say shows, like, playing for seven people at writers' round.

Or, like, and he came to the Bluebird Cafe. I remember, like, had his giant, you remember when they had those giant phones that were, like, the size of top tops, you know. Oh, those T-Mobile sidekicks? Yeah, baby. The bitches was beautiful. Yeah, he had one of those bad boys

and he would just hold it up and record the whole show at the, but he used to drive me crazy. Oh, dude, there's nothing crazier than watching like a boomer kind of like record something or even just somebody from a generation of both or just, we went to the USC fights

the other day and some guy was recorded every single fight. I'm like, he had a front row seat and he was recording and there was a TV right next to him playing the fights. I'm like, you can just go home and watch like, I just do it. didn't understand what was going on.

Yeah. But the fact that he was there and that he cared so much about it and that he loved watching you do it. Yeah, there was this one song that's on the record called I'm a song. Oh, yeah. And he watched me play that

for the first time at Blue Bird Cafe. I'd just written it like that week. Right over here? Yeah, Blue Bird Cafe. And he had his gigantic phone. I'll never forget it. And I was like, Dad, please put your phone down. But he recorded that whole song

and then he called me like a week later he kept talking about that song and about a month before he died he was Father's Day weekend I came up to see him and we went to a tractor pool and then we went home and watched some fights

and he goes hey Stephen you know that song you played the Bluebird like a month ago it's called I'm a song and I was like well how do you even know that like I you know because I was in that point of like writing you know 200 songs a year i was writing you know 10 songs a week so like a month ago like that i'm a song was like 50 songs ago so i was like oh yeah yeah i know that and he's

like yeah you played at the bluebird cafe and uh he's like that's that's my favorite song i was like oh thank you dad and you're like i thought he met like it's my favorite song of his favorite song of mine and uh he was like no you listen to me that's my favorite song. Wow. And I was like, how are you even listening to it? He'd been listening to me. Play it on the Bluebird at the Bluebird on his gigantic team mobile, whatever that thing is.

And that's how he was actually in my first fan. And he was the, you know, he would breathe so much life into me. He believed in me so much more than I ever believed in myself. And I remember him saying, you should sing that song. And when he died, I sang it at his funeral. Oh. And it was one of the hardest songs I've ever sang. But in that moment, like, that was when, you know, I knew things were about to change.

And, but yeah, and that song has helped so many people. And it's, I don't know, it's been a bit of a thesis statement for me. And so when he said write a good song for me, he knew I had already written one, at least in his eyes, because it was his favorite song ever. So he knew, at least he had proof on his phone that I was capable of writing something great. And I guess his last charge was to please keep going and don't stop. And as a, you know. It's got to feel good for him to be, like, even in a moment, like, I mean, that's crazy to say this. What am I talking about?

but in a moment of leaving the earth to know that you have a son or someone who can who you know you've created that's capable you know you have a child that you believe is capable I wonder what you know what you know I'm saying or something like that no I yeah and my other siblings are also very capable he's very proud of all of us equally but I think he he knew something about me was different very young I was a very quiet kid very nerdy kid I had his name and his eyes, but, you know, outside of that, we were so different. So he, I think he just knew I was going to do something different. He's probably intrigued, I bet.

Yeah, and I, like, picked up guitar and taught myself, and he was, like, just always mesmerized by, like, my musical ability, because it seemed like magic to him because it was God-given. Like, nobody taught me how to do this. Really? Yeah, no. Oh, you just picked it up and started playing? Yeah, for the most part. Yeah, I learned some tablature and, but, you know, I sucked real bad then. This is you right here?

Yeah, that was probably like a week after I got my first guitar, if that even, maybe a couple of days. Let me see some of this. Then we're watching. That's not in his family. Yep. Yeah, that's lithium. Yeah. Yeah. Who is that?

Is that your dad now? No. That's just some random old dude. This is after my dad had passed away. Like none of this stuff, like on my whole music, I didn't have any music out when he was alive. Oh, okay. So they're just packaging this all up. Yeah, this is all like old VHS footage from when I was a kid.

That's me getting my first guitar from my 16th birthday, even though I look like I'm 12. Look how hot. Look, hold on, yeah, hold on, right. A little more, right there. Look how hot. You can see, though, how high. happy, cool. Yeah, you can see for a second.

See if you can catch his face a second earlier, maybe a second later. It was pure joy. You can see how right there. You can just see how happy he is, you know? That's cool, dude. Thank you. I'm going to be cool now. No, it's so fun, dude.

Yeah, I might actually have, you know, I might actually be able to talk to a girl now. Oh, dude, yeah. At least if you walk up with a guitar, at least you're rocking this like, hey, at least they'll be like, hey, what do you do? You know what I'm saying? At least you have some sort of semblance instead of hiding, putting hair in your eyes and hide behind it.

I did. I said nothing to nobody. Oh, dude, that was most of my childhood when I was growing up. I was thinking about what are you, what are the responsibilities of a son? You know, people don't think about that a lot. I think about what do my parents owe me a lot as a kid or I have probably, you know, like my parents didn't do this or my parents didn't do that, you know, that's been, you know, or some things didn't happen and should have happened, that's fair. But when I start to harp on the other stuff and it gets into this like, oh, whoa, is. me or pity me type of thing you know that can be kind of a unsafe area to go into um but the two can be easily connected like things that yes a parent should do these things or those things should

be a child's life should include these things and they don't happen and then well a parent they don't owe you these things but attaching those together um but i never think about like what is it what are my responsibilities as a son you know or as a child you know i'm saying you don't think that because at a certain point you do have some responsibility in it yourself you know Um, yeah. I mean, I've, I've had a lot of thought about that. And, um, you know, I grew up thinking the same thing as you, like maybe, you know, things should have been different or, um, but at the same time, I, I tend to think about my parents as children because they had me as children. They were like, it was a shotgun wedding. My mama was six months pregnant. They were teenagers having babies. And, uh, so I also think about. about them like oh my gosh like I have a lot of sympathy for them as I was older but you know growing up I had you know anger and resentment towards certain things that I did not understand but I've kind of tried to you know understand that you know

it's very like biological about like kind of how fathers and sons are just children and their parents In the beginning of your father is like superhuman, or he's a superhero. Like humanized, demonize, and idolize is kind of how I put it down. So in the beginning, you idolize your father. And you idolize everything they do. I remember idolizing my father, like wanting to be a boxer just like him, wanting to do so many things like him.

And I would hide in his shadow and I idolized him my whole childhood. And then once I got into my teen years, that's when that separation starts to begin. And you start to demonize your parents. And you go through this whole demonization of your father or your parents. And it's actually very biological. This is how, like, you know, genetic diversity was spread because we're a tribal species. So, like, the young boy, a young man in his reproductive youth. years would start to demonize the parents and get away from the tribe and go join another

tribe so we can procreate so can procreate and create genetic diversity right because he procreates too close to his own tribe but you also risk like uh yeah inbreeding yeah like the guy that taught me out of drive yeah exactly and i'm not saying no shade brandon i think he was bred properly it was just you know god put some odd paints in his in his palette we love you brand yeah we do we do love you and actually he passed away a few years ago and we do love you who's a special guy. Oh, man. I'm so sorry, Brandon, but yeah, and then as, you know, I think eventually you come back home. There's always like this prodigal son kind of moment, and that's where you humanize your father. Because that's what happened with me. Like, you know, you start off as a kid

idolizing it. You get to teenage years, those years that I, you know, he got me that guitar. I was probably going to start demonizing him soon. And, uh, he wanted you at least have a back beat for it. Yeah, exactly. Something to put all those, those, those, those, put that anger to lyrics yeah you know just make it a bop and then uh and then i remember when i was 25 like i was sitting on the porch with my dad and i just remember it i was like you're just a dude oh yeah and that's when i the humanization hit and i was like you're just another dude doing the best you can and and i could see it in his eyes and we were just kind of like we were you know the father and son dynamic was still there but he was now a friend and something bigger than a father

He's another human, like you're saying. He's just another human. And that's a tough moment. It's an interesting moment, too, to look at because it's almost, it almost breaks down the wars you were fighting or the whatever. You know, it breaks down like a lot. It breaks down the pedestal you held this person on in a way, in a way, some of it. But it also breaks down. If you've been demonizing it like, well, who am I fighting?

I'm not fighting against, you know, the 20, the 32-year-old dad, the guy that I knew who like walked by me and didn't glance or whatever your thoughts are, whatever your thoughts are, whatever you're. whatever like you're envisioning that's not there anymore you know and it's like then then this whole like baton that I'm still carrying of anger it's not even real

so what's really happening here with me and that's like a moment you kind of have to look at yourself as well and that's kind of painful yeah it's very much a self-reflective moment and you kind of start to see kind of like man I was a selfish little shit or I was you know

maybe you were justified in certain areas but or yeah at the end of the day they're they're just another human doing the best they can just like you and who am i going to be now that's the thing too yeah and sometimes i go back and i put on my old my sometimes i go back and i'm the same person but more often than not these days i do a decent job of like well let me be the leader instead of saying you should have led me or you should let me let me grow up it's like how many times do am i going to fucking miss the grow up bus, you know? Like, I'm on it. But still, sometimes I'll be there at the stop in the morning and I'll be like, now I'm going to let that bitch go today. You know what I'm saying? I ain't

getting on that bitch today. So some of that's interesting and it's interesting to look at and you're still just a human looking at it and trying to figure it out. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's, it's, I think all part of the journey and like it all, it's, it's rooted in something very old. Like, I always thought like that teen angst thing was like something created in the 90s or something it's like no this is pre-biblical this is this is something that's been going on for a long time if you study primates enough and you you you can really kind of see a lot of you can learn a lot about humans by studying primates because they're also you know we're technically primates too yeah there's rumors there's rumors yeah I mean we're all part of the animal kingdom kingdom

and we are of the you know we're technically of the greater apes That's what they call us. Yeah, what do you think happen? Do you think, do you think we, what do you think they're about evolution? Because it's so tricky, you know, it's so like, because we're the only people that are out here. It feels like suffering like this sometimes. Can I take a piss and get back to this question? Because this is going to, this has got an answer.

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at www.vallor recoverycoaching.com or email them at admin at valerrecoverycoaching.com. Thank you. There you go, brother. Popping into that Celsius, brother. I'll have a little with you. Let's do it. There you go. Stephen Wilson, Jr. right there, boy. remember i came to um and we just took a bathroom break and stephen put it on a nice sweater yeah i did it's uh it's nice it looks like my my grandma's curtain so it feels oh yeah dude my grandmother she my grandfather worked at a factory in their town it was a small town called wyoming illinois it was real small but it was nice when we went there because it just the world kind of made sense there a little more it was like a safe place to be they had a park right

across the street and they had a garden where like most people had gardens where they grew like strawberries and tomatoes. Everybody had tomato plants, cherry tomato plants. And the summers, the roads would bubble in the summer from the tar. And so it was like kind of crazy because every now and then, you'd somehow, you'd be an idiot at least once a year. And you would run across to the park, but you would not have your shoes on and you would hit that road.

And you would literally, you would have what we called N-A-C-P fee, you know. And I don't know if that's a racially charged term. I don't think it is. I think it's safe. But, yeah, you would get, you would just, but the crazy part is once you got the NAAC, you'd be faster at the park. And that was the craziest part, too.

Yeah, we got that extra soul now. That is. That's what it was. Yeah, you're like, you got something to grip now. Oh, dude, you literally just, bio-souls. Yeah, you were locked in. Like, you got a free pair of Nike's.

Yeah, you did, bro. But there was so many fun things just about being in like a small Midwestern community. The safety of it, the bike riding, the, like, baseball cards. Dude, we would go to this place. Baseball cards, man. They had a dime store. The smell of them. The shitty chewing gum in the pack.

That was so stale. It was so gross. You'd eat it anyway. I chew it every time. I'd be like, every time. I don't care how bad it is. Sometimes it would just disintegrate. Yeah.

Somebody would, like, break off and, like, you could open a box with it. And, yeah, you could, dude. And every card was Mark Grace. I felt like every card was Mark Grace. Oh, Grace. Sean Dunstan Dunstan, or Chris Savo. They were all... Wade Bogs.

Yes. Yeah. Sabo. Gosh, man, you're dropping heat. Well, dude, I mean, your song, 1994 was like, it's just one of the best pieces of nostalgia. Like, I remember, yeah. I remember, like, when I was a kid, my mom had this rug in her room and it was like a... I think it was a cow. I don't know where she got it from or something.

But it was kind of like a prize possession. It was just like a cow skin rug. it could have been a damn Dalmatian or something. I don't know. It looked like it could have been a big Dalmatian. It could have been a Dalmatian, really? It could have been a Great Dane and we got swindled. But anyway, she said it was a cow.

And I would lay there and I would like put my face right and I would inhale it. And like, because I didn't get to spend a lot of time my mom, but sometimes at night, like she would put on hand cream or something. and that was like a big thing when I was a kid hand cream came out for women and so women were always just I mean God I'd be like mom do you love me

and she'd be like well hold on let me put this hand cream on you know it was yeah it was just every woman at the time had to have hand cream it's like they couldn't even cook anymore because they couldn't open the the cupards because they just were too

they would slip out of their hands I think women were just looking for an excuse to get out of the case I was like I can't pick up a pot yeah I just I'll drop it I have too much hand cream old. Everything's cast iron back then. It was like, we can't. Yeah.

We can't afford to lose any of this. But I would lay in there and I would like put my face on the car, but like on the rug. And I would inhale that smell of like leather. And I would just kind of pretend that like I lived in like a different world or that like, like we didn't have a dad around. So I don't know if I'd pretend like there was like this manly energy or just something. You know, it would kind of like the smell would fuel my. imagination, you know, and I would just fantasize that, like, we lived on, like, a ponderosa or that we lived out in, like, New Mexico or Texas or something, you know, or like, I don't

know, just that things were different. But there was something about when you were a kid, or when you were young, and just putting your face on the carpet, it was like, we used to do, there wasn't, you weren't on your phone all the time. And TV, you couldn't just have whatever you wanted, so you would just do kind of crazy things. You look into the couch just to see what was under there like nobody does that anymore yeah yeah that was exciting that was almost like taking a vacation or whatever's looking under there flashlight man blow your mind like there's a whole other world under here like spiders there's like yes you'd be curious about your own world you were curious about the things you had in your own world and you'd

ask mama what is this for why do we have this there was just a lot more like the storytelling you need it it was like more prevalent you know and you had to tell a story you You had to have some value. Like, we created the stories. There wasn't, like, the internet where you could just go and, like, oh, share this link, you know. Like, that's why the storytellers were so valuable thing because it was like, oh, you got to ask him. The only way you're going to hear this is if you ask him, you know, or her. And they're going to tell you about it.

And, man, that was the best, dude. Do you think this may be out of place here, but, you know, because I feel like stand-up comedy and songwriting is kind of our last kind of. That's our, that's our, you know, that is our storytelling now. Because, yeah, like, you're right. People don't pass down those stories generally anymore like they used to. And I wonder if people are craving comedy and creating songwriting, craving songwriting in the same way that, you know, we used to because there may be as a lack of that, those stories being passed down. And that, because I feel like, you know, great comedians are great storytellers and great songwriters or great songwriters are great. storytellers and and that is something that our culture is really not

latching on to is telling stories even like a good joke you know it's hard to find somebody you know what when I was growing up there always be like somebody that would just have like a thousand jokes oh and they weren't comedians they weren't professional comedians and they they weren't wanting to be and but they just had a myriad of jokes which are basically stories like they would go you know they would infuse the jokes into the stories like you wouldn't know if they were telling the truth or not oh yeah and that was like it's kind of a lost art that you don't really see like happening a lot anymore and yeah they had good

storyteller well storytelling was a big thing well i think this is a this is a more general way to look at it i think we've lost some creativity yeah and i think we've lost creativity in a lot of ways i think it's one of the reasons why los angeles has struggled in some ways because in the in the begin in hollywood at hollywood is kind of struggled in some ways and i say this like in the sense that it started to feel super uncreative out there, right? And I don't mean to speak bad on that, but I just think it's a note for that we've just, we're missing some creativity in the world.

And I think the gatekeepers of creativity are starting to fall. So I think you are like, I think we're in a desperate place for creativity and for authenticity where creativity you feel like it's, there's something genuine about it. Yeah. Maybe. I don't know.

it's a great question man i you know i think authentic is like you said is because it's really hard to authenticate anything anymore uh it's kind of hard to find out what is real and and what is not and um you know i i tend to authenticate things with um emotions and experience like if i write a song i kind of have to write it from i can't write or perform anything that I cannot authenticate from my own experiences and my own emotions. Did that make it tough for you to write songs for other people? I think that was a big challenge for me

trying to get other people to see the authentication of my emotions and finding that authenticity within themselves, perhaps, and that alignment happening was a difficult challenge. And for you, say you write a song somebody takes it or somebody accepts it, you know, was a and they're going to cut it um and then you're like it doesn't really fit that person that's a nightmare too that you don't think about yeah and then it's really tough yeah as did

ever happen to you yeah it did and i mean and but you know i think a lot of it is they weren't able to authenticate the emotion that i that that the music had come from that it had originated from and that's not their fault and it's really not mine it was just kind of the nature of the business um but yeah i think I think, you know, if I've had any advantage is like the only way I can create a song is, is I have to authenticate it in something truly real. I can't, like, I can't do fantasy music. I can't, like, I can't be like something. I can't be Superman. I can't be a Marvel character. And I can't play something I'm not. I think it's because there's too much of you already who you are that I don't even think, you know, it would fit. You're just a rare foot. You know what I'm saying? So it's like a rare foot. It's like, yeah, some feet it can be like, oh, we'll put it in something.

It'll look good here. It'll look good here. But I think we're like, no, that's, that's. Yeah, I was called different a lot as a kid. It was not a compliment most of the time. It was rarely. But I have to say it has been an advantage of as of late. And like being the weirdo finally helped out.

Oh, for sure. You know, for so long you're Clark Canton and you're in there just, you know, changing clothes in a phone. or whatever and people like this guy is a pervert or whatever and then eventually come out and think some things start to fit um i've heard you say i've heard you say that songwriting kind of was like a survival tool for you mm-hmm not that's the right words no yeah it was like uh it was my therapy especially in those first couple years after my dad died like i i kind of uh i used science and songwriting at the same time because i have a lot of training in science

I went and got a science degree. I worked... Would you go to Purdue? No, I went to MTSU. Oh, you did? Yeah, and I worked at Mars, the food company and R&D for them as a food scientist. Oh, wait. Mars candies?

Yeah. Research and development for them? Yeah. They're based out of... And you all make snickers, huh? They do, but I actually worked in pet food for them, which is based out here in Nashville, the Nashville area at least. Oh, God, if you were snacking on that, huh? Yep, that's me right there.

Shit, I wouldn't even go to work if that's all they had in the damn snack bowl. Yeah, and they did. They had, like, buckets of Snickers. I put on, like, 30 pounds. Oh, I was talking about pet food. Oh, yeah. I'm like, I'd wear a, if I ain't that much fat food, I'd wear a damn helmet, too. That's insane.

People did eat pet food there. I saw it with my own eyes. Would some people try a little? Got used to it? Yeah, I'd see some people do it. Like, sometimes, like, you know, you'd see some high-level people do it, too. Like, you don't need to do this, dude. Oh, shit, that's just Cracker Jack Russell.

You know? They're just trying to, like, you know, get down. you know get down with us a little bit oh yes some people love animals so much they'll have a you know there's people that even videos of people that will snack with them and have those little treats yeah i don't advise it from a microbiological perspective really because i have a micro degree as well i wouldn't eat raw cat food like wet cat food i mean it does go through like a cooking process that makes my winger soft brother i'll tell you that out the gate but i did see dudes eat it would you yeah like with a spoon like wet cat food eat it why i think it

a flex no is a flex yeah is there one type that's the good type take me through some of that no it's all uh as far as like cat food to eat yeah it gets a little snack no i don't want to try none of it because i knew what was in that and uh and i knew like what was in like proteins and like all that that goes into those foods and uh i understood all the kill steps and stuff were there but i also know that my digestive track is far different from felines or canines and we ain't made to eat what they're made to eat in so um so yeah i didn't really i did not partake but yeah you'd see a dude like take a big spoonful cat food and then like drive off in his Lamborghini because you know it was usually like a high level person yes like it's a power it wasn't it was a power move yeah

it was impressive though i was like damn dude i was just talking my friend this morning at breakfast about things that the powerful do and why they operate certain ways because it's like yeah what can i do how weird or could this get if you have everything if the if the basic like i need to make money to survive i need to feed my family or once you have like i have seven wives living in different cities i'm in a live in a jet or i live in a some people might be living on other planets now they don't even know got their own islands yes and then what yeah at this point yes i'm not having cat food but i'm with the greatest cat food ever i want cat food that cats can't even afford to eat Yeah. And sometimes they'd pretend like they could discern between, be like,

they're not going to like this. I was like, you're not a cat. Yeah. Like, how do you? Or he's eating, he's eating, that's for cats. He's like saying like, he's basically stating he's eating so much of this food. He can now discern between what will work and what will not. That's good. Oh, that's good. Oh, that's good. Oh, that's good. They're going to love this. Yeah.

The Himalayan cats are going to love this. That's a lot of aftertaste. What was a product that you guys made while you were there? Do you remember one product that kind of came through? Yeah, it's called Dentistics Fresh. It's still on the market. I see it out there. And it's for animals?

Yeah, it's for dogs. It's basically a teeth cleaning dental chew. Oh, it's pretty cool. Very digestible. There it is. That's my baby right there. Oh, yeah, I've seen that before. Yeah, that was one of my products that I launched from start to finish.

Yeah. That's cool. It's cool. It's cool to see it. Out there still, still doing its thing. Yeah. At the end of the show, you hum some of those out in the audience. Yeah, I probably need to start chucking them out there.

Like take a bite out of it. I'll catch one. I'll catch one in my mouth. No, I would eat one of those if I had to, but I wouldn't eat none of that cat food. That's fair. And look, I love to hear that. That's mostly like flour. That's mostly wheat flour and it got, you know, it ain't got the same ingredients of cats.

Did you ever pitch a product that they didn't like, or you were allowed to pitch products? You did? Yeah, I did. I pitched a lot of products. But at the end of the day, I was the geeky scientist, and they're like, you need to make what you need to make. And they have a much, I think, a greater understanding of what the market requires than some of us geeky scientists do. I had my own lab, and I would come up with these new things and new designs and pitch them in my free time. And there was a lot of creativity to it.

And, you know, that was, you know, there's actually a lot more creativity to analysis than you think. a lot more analysis to creativity than you think. I think the two can work very well together and like back to what I was saying, but like when my dad died, I was able to kind of apply science and songwriting because I was like so devastated, but like I was kind of able to metaphorically put a lab code on and go into researcher mode. And that's kind of where the songs came from i just started like looking at my pain from another perspective like trying to look at it from the outside in as a an observer and then just kind of documenting my findings as i went like i spent four years making this record son of dad and like two or three of those years were research years

just me documenting everything i was going through wow and um and keeping you know meticulous records scientists do but i was channeling that into songs instead of like you know a pet food product but i was still using the same methodology like because i i had to be true to it because that's the thing about science it's just a truth detection tool it's not an ideology or a paradigm it's just a it's effective tool if it's used correctly it's like a metal detector you know exactly or a chainsaw even if you use it great it can be great but you use it right it can be great if you use it wrong it might cut your damn hand off like science created the atomic bomb it's also created cures for incurable diseases that we thought it's a beautiful thing but at the end of the day it's just a

tool for detecting truth and i used it like that so i would have this question and i'd have my observations and then i'd create a hypothesis as you would say uh which would basically be a song a song title and idea and i would go out and test it in the world i'd I'd play in front of seven people here, 10 people there, seven people here, seven people there. And I would get instant data. Feedback, which is data that in the scientific field, we can spend six months before we, it can be six months before you get your first result from an experiment. So I was getting instant results. So I love that part of it.

Yeah, I think that instant feedback is, I mean, yeah, it helps you know what's going on. It's even like working with the jokes, you know, and getting them out there. Absolutely. That's pretty fascinating how, like, the parts of your life, like, to be a scientist, to have, like, a methodology, to then use it to channel your emotions and look at, you look at your emotions, look at your life, look at the path of things, you know, to put, like, to almost, like, take a template of science and apply it to something as emotional as music. Yeah, that kind of joke around calling myself a song scientist, but that's essentially what it is.

because, you know, user bias is like it can so easily contaminate your results and contaminate your entire experiment and experience. And so I really was trying to use user bias because I was trying to authenticate something in one of my own emotions and experiences, but also take user bias out of it because at the end of the day, you've got to find the truth. And just because you don't like the results doesn't mean. mean they're not true and that's where user bias like gets in the way because you want the results to be different maybe you really like this song but you're not getting the results that you thought

it was going to get so you start you start adjusting your formula and then before you know it you got conclusive results either conclusively this is not the truth or conclusively this is the truth and then you run with the truth whether it's good for you or bad for you and that's yeah looking at this right here, it says user bias refers to cognitive tendencies that distort how individuals perceive, interpret, or respond during research. What are examples of user bias? For example, you think that this is going to work for whatever reason you have a hunch, like that this, whatever thing is going to work. And you've now like attached an emotion to it because you almost need it to work now.

Now it's more about you than it is about the truth. So when you go into like an experiment, it doesn't need to work out for you. Like your feelings have to be completely separate from this. If you're doing true research. But if you're going to be a true researcher and using the scientific method the proper way. So, you know, that's, I guess when you get into a song,

especially a song about your dad or a song about loss, It's easy to be like, well, it needs to be like this. It needs to say this or it needs to say that because that's what's going to make me feel good, but that may not be the truth. Yeah, I think your songs don't really take me on like a, they don't take me on a typical journey of like a beginning, middle, and end, I guess.

And some of them are different than others, of course. But yeah, I guess sometimes you think of a song, especially if it's a country song, I think, of having like a beginning, middle, and end, almost like a journey, whereas yours sometimes sort of like take me on a, a ride down, a ride past something or through something. Yeah.

And it's not as much of like you're giving me this story as much as you are providing some things and I'm the story, I'm remembering the story of mine that pertain, that associates with it sometimes. Yeah. Well, that's, I feel like my favorite. And I'm not trying to, like, what the fuck do I know? But some of that happens with your music. That's what I'm saying.

Well, that's, uh, if, if there's any goal I've ever had as a songwriter is to basically do that because I, I remember I heard this song called don't take the girl on a school bus when I was a kid. It made a mess out of me. And, um, yeah, because everything, it's like, and this is now he's 20 years older and then he now it's the end of the time. But I was able, in the weirdest way, because my mom was, you know, my mom and dad divorced when I was really young and she was with some abusive men. And, um, and she lived. And, um, and she lived. in Tennessee when I was a kid and I was always I spent most of my childhood very worried about her like really very worried about her getting killed or hurt really badly why did she like abusive men do you think um I think probably a lot her childhood was very very hard oh so maybe something happened and then she were related to it I think she's a beautiful lady what's her name Kathy Kathy Lynn Kathy Lynn there she is yeah and uh you know she's just a baby having a baby and uh you know trying to and my dad was in you know a great uh a great man but they were also teenagers and they they were kind of like forced to wed because of religion you know that

like she was six months pregnant when they got married with me there's no way they were going to have a child out of wedlock right that was in not going to not cool and then they end up having two more kids and before they know it they're 22 years old and they got three kids and it's that crazy and so that you know i have to you know give her a lot of you know a lot of grace because of you know her life was very hard and she was very young and i don't understand a lot of the you know some of those choices she made but i remember you know spending most of my childhood and you know in fear of her of getting that call that she was she was gone yeah is she your mother still alive yes she is oh beautiful yeah and um she's

had a wild year and um she's she's very much with us and um she's at a wild year yeah she almost got killed this year on an at tv accident it's wow that you brought that picture up but she literally um yeah she she had a very much a near death experience she spent two months in the ICU and um yeah it was it was it's been a wild year for all of us especially her ATV deaths happened to so many people yeah i don't people don't realize how popular it is i don't want one of them things anywhere around me. Yeah. I'm not saying we're getting you one this year.

No, please don't. I'll sell it on anybody. Yeah. We're not too. Yeah. Yeah. Skip go with that one. Yeah.

That one can go on to the next. In the United States, ATV related deaths typically ranged from $300,900 annually. But yeah, it's, I don't know why we're even talking about this, and I'm sorry, but I'm glad to know that she's doing well. When you guys were young, what kind of stuff was she struggling with stuff or? Yeah, yeah. She had a lot of struggles. struggles and young age is so tough can you imagine that when your mother can you imagine like when i was 22 i was just concerned if i had enough you know time and might have day to jerk off

without somebody bothering me and here there were people feeding children she like i mean she had no business having children and uh but yeah they had these you know they very much had these children and and she was going through some really tough stuff and um you know like my dad got custody of us which was kind of rare at the time and but i remember hearing that song and i was able to put her in that song yonnie's daddy it was like and it didn't make no sense that you know like why is my mom in this song she shouldn't be like it doesn't follow the storyline oh but your head put her in there but my head put her in there and i was able to copy and paste all of my emotions into that song and three and a half minutes later i was a wreck like like not because

of the song but because of my mom being in the song right and i was like okay that's like to me that's what the the wizardry of songwriting is like Craig martin and larry johnson wrote that song not knowing that some southern indiana boy was going to be like you know be bawling on a school bus with around a bunch of ffa kids wasn't a good look and um yeah and so yeah i mean that's really what i i mean i would say that was the moment that I really got bitten by or like song bit so to speak because I realized that music was more than just beats and sounds and making words rhyme it was literally taking a story like like taking someone's life and making it part of a piece of art and uh and uh wow and that's that's really what a great song does and I think the real great songs out there

And me as a songwriter, the only thing I've tried to pay forward was that. So when you said that, like I was, you're able to put yourself in those songs. That's really all I've ever hoped to achieve. Not so much to put, just put myself in those songs. I want to put other people in those songs and let them be the star of it, not me. Got it. And I feel like that's, if it's anything, that's what, how people are respond to the music. It's about them. It has nothing to do with me up there. I'm just a

vessel. Yeah. No, I think, and I think there's a lot of guys that are trying to feel. I think especially for a lot of young men, it's been like, there's a lot of feeling and processing that that we've missed somehow, or we haven't found a way to do it. I think it's the same thing that I notice with some of Red Clay Stray's music, and it's different. You guys, this stuff is totally different. But if you go to their show, they're great. Their show, it's a lot of men, probably kind of adult men who are trying to find ways to process stuff. That's what I believe anyway. And it's interesting to see that. It's interesting to see like, where do we go to process stuff and how do we do it? And yeah, I think your music does a lot of that for people.

Yeah, and that's why I was saying that, yeah, it would be hard for you to write for somebody, makes it a little bit tougher to have a career in some ways because you don't have like you're you and you can write some songs and but man that with your stuff is so personal it feels like to your brain and perspective and attitude that it'd be hard for a regular foot to fit into it you know yeah that was that was the challenge you know like there's there's you know this sounds so much like you that was right and you know but at the same hurts at the time because you're like well fuck i'm just trying to do this but then in the end it's like oh well i'm the i'm the instrument yeah and that just takes yeah and then that's a that's a that's a gift that you are because if you

found this other avenue that was for songwriting and i know you've had some success in it but if you've found this other avenue that was hugely successful then you may not have continued to nurture or the energy may not have been on the seed that was you you know, the sunlight might have not focused on you to keep that grow up. Honestly, if my dad was still alive, I mean, none of this would have happened. I mean, really, you know, I'd probably be just writing songs trying to get cuts and probably still failing at it. Yeah, your dad would be selling merch for you.

It'd be nice, huh? Yeah, he might, he would mean, he would still be there with his giant phone, probably recording every bit of it, proud as hell. Man, my, my, uh, I was just thinking about my dad. So my dad was very old when I was born. And so I remember, like, I was ashamed to my dad. So I had a lot of shame about him, you know. But I grew up in a lot of fear, too, in our household.

Like, my sister was real sick, and so I was always scared that she was going to pass away. And then my dad was old. So he was in his 70s when I got to know him, so I was always afraid he was going to pass away. So it was like this constant thing of, like, you know, it just felt like somebody was just going dang, ah, you know? Yeah.

So it made everything kind of dower, I think, or, I don't know it made it like the perspective was dim that's what it was and my brother would mess with me he'd come in the room and he'd be like dude dad's dead and like what he'd like go in there dude go in there right now and my dad would fall asleep all the time because he was like 76 or 77

and those people like to sleep a decent amount during the day and I don't know if he'd be a sleeper he'd be laying there with his eyes closed you know I'm saying a lot of old people like I'm awake I'm at work you know that's fucking yeah yeah I'm married you know that it's not forgetting the things that are important, you know.

But I would go up and I would have to go like, and he would be alive. And I would be like, fuck you, you're full of shit. So then it got to this weird part where my brother would come in the room, he'd be like, dude, dad's dead. And I'm like, dude, he better be dead when I go in there or I'm going to beat your ass. So it became, and it flipped this whole perspective of like what was normal in the world. So my friends would be like, dude, what do you mean? He better be dead. you know, fight your brother.

You know, like, no, he does this all the time, dude. He's not freaking dead. You were like, I don't know, you were combating the dark arts with other dark arts. Yeah, or my mom would be like, go spend time with your dad because he's probably going to die soon. He'd like, all right, you know, and shit like that. But she was just doing us to get us out of the room so she could tidy up or something. You know, some trick. But it was just weird shit, you know.

And so. And it was true, too. He probably was going to die soon. So I was like, well, get in there and spend some time with him or draw a picture of them. We probably have, like, 70 pictures of them. we drew of crayons. But if she was like, go in there and draw a picture of them, you know, you're going to want it, you know. And it's horrible pictures, you know.

And sometimes we'd draw them, like, as a black guy just like, you know, just like, because it would seem more exciting or whatever, but. Were you, uh, were you quiet as a kid? No, I don't think that I was. I think I was, like, kind of curious. Yeah. And I like to make excitement somehow. Like, I like to create ambiance for things.

Hmm. But I think I was probably. I don't know, my mom says she didn't tend to me that much because it seemed like I was doing fine. Yeah. So she didn't think I needed like a lot of attention because she felt like I was doing okay, you know? Because we've had like some conversations about that stuff.

But yeah, I think that was a big regret I had, was that I had like a lot of shame about my dad's age. And so I didn't even embrace him really that much, you know, because I just, I was ashamed of it. Wow. But it's just, life's just harrowing like that. You and I had like polar opposite dads. My dad was like a baby and I was like a, I guess I was kind of, I wouldn't say I was a, I was, yeah, it was, yeah, they were just kind of totally different perspectives to think about.

Like my dad was like a child, like honestly like a big brother. Really? A lot of ways because he was only 18 years older than me. Oh yeah, that's pretty normal. I mean, I was like, there's actually, there's actually siblings out there that are like 15 years older than there's a, wings you know yeah so yeah I mean that that had to be that had to be tough I find that people that are that's why I asked you know people that are spend a I know I've I spent my whole childhood in a state of fear of loss fear of losing someone really unloosable at that

time like what would make that happen it is such a oh because your mom being gone my mom yeah I was like like losing her was not like something I was willing to bear but it seemed like it was inevitable and like something that was like just around the corner too so like it made me like retreat as a kid it made me like really quiet and observe it like observe everything you got to make sure everything's okay yeah and keep my mouth shut because like i i didn't want to say something or you know you know that could cost me her yeah it could cost me her or um you know i I didn't want to draw attention to it or speak anything into existence about it. And I didn't want anybody to know about it either.

So it was like my own little, you know, my own little thing. And my dad didn't know about a lot of her what she was going through with her other husbands. Like that was something that I knew about. Yeah. And that was a tough secret to carry because, uh, you know, it was, you know, he would have never, he wouldn't have wanted me around that. And God knows what he would have done to those dudes.

And he probably would have killed him or something. And so I was, I was always worried. I was always trying to protect my dad from himself. And I was trying to protect my mom from herself. It made me grow up real quick. And I bet your dad's situation probably made you grow up quicker. Well, it makes you aware. That's the thing.

And the worst thing to be as a young kid in some ways, it's just so aware. because you're living on this different timeline. You're living on this other thing. It's good to be oblivious in those years and really ignorant to like the pain and the magnitude that is the weight of loss as a kid. Like we insulate and protect, we protect children from that. We don't even bring them the funerals because we don't want them to see.

That's something my dad, I've got to say, I could give him a lot of credit because I've seen people die from a young age, from grandparents, the family members like he would bring me to funerals probably because he couldn't find a babysitter like what's he going to do like get a babysitter or have us wait in a car he's like no you're going to come and look at this dead body you're going to see this dead person because one day it could be me and like my dad you would drop us off at funerals in our town if there was to in order to get time away from he dropped me off at two funerals in our town I had no any know anybody at and he would take us to leave us at burger king for eight hours like they were a babysitter that he had no I'm like

And every time we were like, Dad, they do not want us there anymore. We ate like 11 French toastics that people gave us. And they don't even have a play place. He, like, he enjoyed the play place. And he'd like, it's the wrong one. Burger King doesn't have it, dude. They don't have it everywhere. No, so this lady named Ms. Wanda, she was always like the lady that would take care of us in there.

And we would just drink those syrups when people left them there. But we'd be at the fucking Burger King for like eight hours talking to people, me and my sisters. And it would just be bizarre. But you'd end up in bizarre shit like that, you know? my dad would take he'd be like drive me over to the post office because I was kind of tall when I was 10 or 11 maybe 12 so I'd drive him over there but I didn't have a driver's license or anything and there'd be no parking spots he'd like we'll just do a couple laps around the block while I'm in here and I'd be like and there was this huge cutlass as Delta 88

and so I was like I can't drive this bitch and didn't have power steering dude I would hit and the car was so banged up I I fucking hit probably seven cars going around that block totaling cars with that oh dude just hit all kinds of shit because yeah because those things are solid and there was no like mirrors or there was no there was no mirrors for sure after I hit the street but there was no

cameras nobody knew what had happened you know and I would just be in there and if dad had to wait to buy stamps I'd be out there I'd fucking hit 50 cars dude but dude it was just you would be in crazy scenarios

odd environments put you in crazy scenarios that other people couldn't fathom and then it would just kind of get your brain to like a different place so your brain was kind of operating in some wild territory one of the things

you said, yeah, yeah, I wonder how many kids are quiet because they're worried if they just tall, if they affect the world in some way, that it could alter, that they could, you know, because when you're a child, things are very balanced in your head. Like, I remember I would swallow on both sides of my mouth. I would be careful how I stepped. If I counted one, I had to count one on the other side of my brain. I always had like these two sides inside of me. And I'm like, one over here, one over here. Like these little things I had to do, right? And, um, I did the same thing. Yeah.

Ticks. Little ticks. And it was because I had to keep things even. Everything had to be even. And so I wonder how many times kids operate in this space where it's like I just can't affect anything too much because things as far as I recognize them are already like kind of on a uncertain fulcrum, on a one-footed fulcrum. And it's going to get weird, you know. No, I think you just hit you hit the nail on the head right there. It's interesting.

With me. Yeah. I think that was, I think you articulated it far better than I did or could have. But yeah, you're afraid to affect the world because you might change it for the worst. So like I'm going to stay Switzerland and keep my mouth shut. Yeah. And I did that for most of my childhood. And then.

But then a lot of the world happens inside of you then. Yeah. If it's not happening inside of you, a lot of the conversations and stuff, they happen inside of you. Yeah. which is interesting yeah and it's i think it can be painful and scary but also kind of fascinating uh it allows you to be by yourself a lot and and it it teaches you and trains you to be alone and thrive and loneliness and if there's anything or like with boxing songwriting i'm assuming comedy you know there's a lot of loneliness to it you got to be inside your own head a lot

in order to do it properly. Like, it's not like, you know, you just go up and play a baseball game and hit a homer. And then, you know, it's this thing you've got to stay in all the time. Yeah. It's not event-based.

It's just kind of this state of mentality. That's a good point, especially with boxing, because boxing, most of it is the training. Yeah. The fights are very rare. Yeah, the fights are rare and short compared to the training. So your father was a box.

boxer. How did he get into it? Do you know how? Yeah. Well, he started probably a year before I was born. He saw Muhammad Ali fight. Muhammad Ali was like his hero. He's from Louisville, Kentucky, so almost like a local dude too. Yeah, my dad just idolized him. He just watched all his fights loved everything about him in and out of the ring um and um i think yeah he was just really inspired by ali's story and he literally just wanted to start boxing um and i think the movie rocky probably just came out around that time too i bet that probably had something to do with it a lot of whites got caught up in that yep and um but i think with the combination of Muhammad Ali and Rocky Balboa, yeah, my dad said,

hey, I want to put on some gloves. And before he knew it, he was fighting. And he started on his own, just like literally fighting anybody, like signing up for tough man competitions. And then he ended up finding this great gym up in Indianapolis and fighting under this coach named Champ Cheney. That was his name. Champ Cheney, bring him up.

Let's get a gander at him. I like to see this man. today i can still smell the cigar smoke that's him dude you go champ oh dude i haven't seen him forever let him have that that second picture right there that's exactly how i remember i he'd have that same sweater on every time i'd see him oh yeah yeah police athletic league that was the the power clubs we'd fight at like we would open up for our dad's fights like when he got into like champs tutelage that's when he started like really doing well okay because he didn't have any really good training And very much like how Apollo trained Rocky, Champ trained my dad.

He, like, reformatted his whole style. He taught him footwork. He taught him head movement. He taught him all the things that he lacked fundamentally. Because my dad was just a tough guy with a mean punch and a heart of a lion. Oh, yeah. And he could just train, train, train, train. He loved to train.

He loved to work. And Champ loved that about him, his work ethic. He'd show up to Indianapolis. He'd spar anybody. I remember him getting up in the morning and literally having to peel his eyes open to see us because of just sparring, not from a fight. Just sparring those dudes and champs gym.

Dude, go ahead. And I was just going to say, I mean, he had a lot of guys that didn't care for him, and I remember him talking about that. He really had to fight for his spot at that gym. Your dad did? He did. What reasons would they have not to care about him?

Or care for him? I think, you know, he just, I think Champ maybe favored him because he really put in a lot of work. Got it. And he, I think Champ saw what he was going through. He was bringing his kids to the gym. And, you know, and he was very much out of sorts there culturally. And he was fighting an uphill battle. And he was, and the wind was in his face.

And he just still kept going forward. And I feel like that's what Champ saw in him. And so when we started boxing as a kid, I mean, my first memories are. the sounds of these fights. Like that right there, like I can smell that picture. Like, I can smell the room. I can,

it's cigar smoke and isopropyl alcohol with menthol in it. And it's, it's all those, and a lot of sweat and leather and the sound of, like, cops under the table gambling,

screaming red and blue. Because that's where you, you'd be like red and blue. They'd have like red head gear. Like this was an exhibition fight. Me and my brother were fighting each other in this one. So we didn't have an opponent, so they'd just have us fight each other. So that was one of the fights we opened up for my dad.

Well, they gave both y'all a trophy too, which is fucking sure. Yeah, it's like a participation trope because it's an exhibition fight. But if you both get one, yeah, I could see that. Just tell them both are the winner. There's exhibition fights, and then there's competition. These are exhibitions. So in an exhibition fight, you both get a trophy. Got it.

You're just exhibiting the sport of boxing. not really nothing's going on your amateur record or anything like that but then we ended up fighting other kids and when they could find a boy our size of fight we'd fight him

and so we would open up like the first two or three fights on the card would be kid fights oh that's fun so I've I joke around I've been an opener for a long time and yeah I really haven't there's nothing fun of them watching a kid

smoke cigarettes or fight another kid a little kid I did both of those things hell yeah Yeah, there's something about that. I think they should have a zoo where you get to watch people do unique shit. Yeah. If they had a section where a couple kids are sitting there smoking, like, don't have them smoke all day because I know it's bad for them. Yeah, it's bad for one.

But they get two cigarettes a day each. And it's like at a certain time, they smoke and you all get to watch it. And you're like 15 minutes a day, you know, come in and watch it. And you could stream it too. If you didn't want to go in person, you could stream it. But you're telling me, some kids smoking it on my lunch break at 12, 15 p.m. a day, you know, Gary or Robert or whatever is going to smoke. If you find a little Gary, let me know. Yeah.

You bubble wrap him, protect him. That's that precious, that's a gear breed right there. Oh, yeah, that's Gary, Indiana, isn't it? Gary, Indiana is a wild place I've heard. But yeah, I would watch a kid. I would love to watch a kid smoke, you know. Yeah. So, and maybe that sounds very Russian.

I mean, I don't know. I've been online a lot. No, I think smoking's a very American thing, too. But yeah, I just love, like, I don't know. I love nostalgia, too. That's something that I love, dude. I remember the first, yeah, going to funeral. Like, I just, I love the first of everything.

Because after the first time of everything, everything lost a lot of luster for me in life, I think, a lot of times. And I don't know why that is. And I don't mean it, like, super negative. Like, I'm not down in the dumps or anything. Yeah. But I just, it's the first, it's like, there's something fascinating about the first time of everything.

Yeah. Yeah. That nostalgia is a, it's a really effective tool as far as, you know, making people go back to memories. Because you get attached, then. When you get in your own memory, you're attached. Yeah. You know, it's like, yeah, there's just something that attaches you there. Yeah, and you can use senses to, like, as an appendage to nostalgia, like a sense of smell, a sense of sight or sound,

and touch all that and i think if you kind of use those senses and appendage them to a certain type of nostalgia you can unlock a memory within any human yeah like all humans it doesn't have to be your memory you can you suddenly have a key to so many memories so many minds and uh and you yeah you open up these memories that people have had vaulted for years and when they come out it's like It's almost like seeing that toy that you got for Christmas when you were seven years old that you were so excited about. But seeing it again for the first time when you're in your 30s or 40 and you kind of relive that excitement. For at least a second, like, oh, man, I remember that feeling. I haven't seen that in 30 years.

And when you can unleash that memory, it's such a beautiful thing. You see it on people's eyes. You see them traveling through time. and um yeah it's yeah it's like the first time you're a song kind of that really touches you you know like uh it's a human thing why i got a new complaint yeah who are ever and that who's sang that song you know nirvana it's heart-shaped box god that song was fucking good oh it's incredible yeah i hear that song home from school to listen to that song dude and watch the video or like i remember watching the video and just been like i i remember like kurt rocking back and forth in

that chair just everything about it like that whole record in utero was just like life-changing for me that was huge scentless apprentice oh my god yeah this is the video oh i do remember some of this now dude uh i've been locked inside your heart shape oh dude yeah when sound garden came up bro sound garden changed my life stone temple pilot bro i actually learned how to play guitar from Soundgarden. People, if they're like, if I could, like, give anybody, like, who taught you how to play guitar? It literally, like, if I could credit anybody, it would be the band Soundgarden.

And I feel, is that Soundgarden? When the, that's Stone Tipple Pilots. That was they were all so good. What was a Soundgarden song? There's so many, like, as far as hits, you got like Black Hole Sun, fell on black days. Like, blow up the outside world, one of my favorites. The Outside. Rusty Cage, Pretty News.

The day I tried to live, the Fourth of July is heavy as hell. I love Fourth of July. Lemo wreck. Oh, that slaps. Super heavy. Jam, don, don, do, do. Well, that's Fourth of July.

Jum, don't, don't. Blow up the outside. Dude. One of the greatest rock and roll vocal performances ever is blow up the outside world. Like, listen to that Chris Cornell vocal and just talk to me after. It is like a

A clinic Is it pretty good? Put these on. Let's play it real quick. You're going to play a couple songs for us today? Do you think, Stephen? Yeah, let's do it. Come on, I'm scared.

Let's listen to this together if we can. There's so much like John Lennon influence in this song. You can really... Ooh. It seems to kill me. Oh. I try Remember how videos were so much too then.

I'm so much too then. Seems to break me Oh Riding a dude riding somewhere Just listen to a song by yourself There was nothing like it Used to my buddy He would smoke cigarettes in his car

And you just throw him in the backseat When he was done smoking him Yeah Flipping the butt in the back seat It burnt up like 70 times The back of his party He would just He'd have a little water bottle

From his mom's hair salon And he just like his ass it out yeah zap it bro his voice was like nobody's oh it's insane I mean I didn't even seem human

that he was doing this no very few people had like that range of being able to go that high but also like go low and make it meaningful and then go back down to this world yeah oh and take you there a lot of those high singers would lose you when they go down like that they kind yeah it's all i mean just so enveloped like you just like you wanted to be in their world smashing pumpkins there was a lot of good and i always one thing i've never liked i don't like

music where you can't hear the words right yeah sometimes the way they do mix is something it loses me yeah if i can't hear the words that's the part that i need the most right yeah because i need to feel so like the beat and stuff helps it's cool for me but for me i've always been like um what are the words telling us you know yeah you want to know the story yes i want to feel something from it yeah you know um now i'm with you that i mean that's i'm a word nerd so yeah i'm assuming you are too. Oh, I love to write. That was like my favorite thing. I think like one of my goals maybe the next couple years would be to like finally get a book done. Like I've written a lot of stuff and I've written probably half of maybe two books, but I would like to finally get it done.

But once video became so popular, it was just like, and once podcasting became busier, it was hard to focus on that. Is there anything good in the news right now that we want to check out? Dude, I did, well, you look up an article, Trevin, I saw something about Facebook and did research and then they canceled it after it started to find beliefs that they didn't want we were talking about that we were talking about a few minutes ago

about research yeah what kind of user bias oh about user bias on boxing have you done any boxing because you know I've got a lot of MMA

I've got a lot of MMA stuff I love it as soon you know what I wouldn't mind getting into something more the past year's been tough for me I didn't invest in a lot the past couple years were touring I kind of should have invested

more of like having a trainer with me on the road or things like that. I kind of took some of that for granted. And I think in the future that I'll do it differently. But this year I'd like to get more to focus and more on my health and stuff like that. I've really burned myself out pretty good. But I used to take

MMA classes and I have a feeling that I'll get back into it. I've also had traveled. I was moving a lot too, but now I'm going to be here more. And so I need to put some roots more in some places like that. So it's like I'll be able to have more of a system like a pattern. And so it's been tough for me to have that.

It's so hard to find that. I mean, I box a lot here in town. Well, a lot. When I'm in town, I try to as much as I can. But it's, it's helped me so much just try to, even if it's two days a week. I only brought it up. I went to the UFC Performance Institute in Las Vegas. Oh, that's what I heard.

Last week. Because we played in Vegas last week, and they invited me in. It was so cool. Oh, we had the fights? No, it was after the fights, but I saw Sean Strickland there. Oh, you did? Yeah, like, oh, dude, he's a really amazing guy. He's an interesting guy.

Incredible. He's a deep soul. He is a deep soul. And just such a nice guy. Everybody there was so nice. They're so great. Did you get to work out there or train there at all? No.

Yeah, I did. I trained with Brandon Jenkins there. You did? Yeah. Dude, bring up Brandon Jenkins. I went to, I try to. I did. Yeah, Forrest Griffin basically gave me the tour.

and like he met me there and I was like holy hell there he is nice dude yeah yeah he put some work on me and uh that's awesome that was really out of shape you know but it was cool I got to learn some new things like he you know because I only train with boxing guys and he's an m-ma guy so like it was just there was a lot of different angles a lot of new things I had to learn and take it you know kind of slow and kind of start from scratch it was it was humbling and I was like four weeks on the road and very like four weeks having not trained is too much time off to like go back I felt like a total piece of crap yeah I looked real bad and I felt like I looked real bad that's a tough thing as you get older too it's like you gotta catch me give me a couple days to prepare for anything I can do it but do not catch me if I've had four or five Diet Cokes and you want me to box or whatever bitch I'm staying in the car you know what I'm saying like do not too much as per time yeah that's what it is dude it's like I look like a damn teddy bear or something you know because also my body style my god-given body style is uh I'm built kind of like a gingerbread cookie a little bit you know

like I'm sturdy bring up a good G bread on me daddy it's seasonal anyway I bet you can throw you know what I can survive dude I'll do okay put me give me a couple weeks of uh of uh that's how I'm built right there yeah now sturdy I got a sturdy base on me yeah your legs look like that well I think those boat legged like that no This one had a bad, this one might have been in a bad oven, but I got a little bit more frosting on me than that one, but yes, anyway, maybe the one,

they don't really make a perfect cookie, dude, but we should, do you know what would be interesting? What if we made cookies of, like, people that have been on this show, and we sold it, it was like a fun, like, we could do part of it as like a fundraiser or something for moms or something. It's good.

We eat each other's cookies. And you just get a bad, A batch of them or something. Yeah, you can get a batch of the Stephen Wilson's. Like, they can bite my head off? I love that. If you're writing with your husband, you just get you a batch of them Stephen Wilson's and chew his head off. So that's pretty crazy.

So Brandon Jenkins met you out there. And Forrest Griffin met you out there. Yeah, and they gave me a tour of the whole facility. Oh, it's cool, huh? Oh, man. It was like I was a kid at a candy shop. Did they take you through, like, not just the gym part, but also the UFC building and stuff? Yeah.

Yeah, I got to go into, like, the lunch. Yeah, dude, it's nice. Yeah, I was like, this is so nice. And, yeah, like, you don't, this is like the most dangerous lunch room you'll ever walk into. Like, seriously, like, like, everybody was so nice and so friendly, but it was like, you'll never walk into a cafeteria that could hurt you so bad. Yeah. Oh, even the line cooks will have, like, cauliflower. You like, you want cauliflower?

You're like, oh, I'm good. How about the broccoli? Yeah, yeah, dude. Even like, yeah, I think, like, the head chef in there last week was like Brann and Roy Valis. I'm like, they got some gangsters in here. I'm being careful what I asked for in here. Yeah. Oh, that's hilarious, dude.

Meta buried casual evidence of social media harm. U.S. court filings alleged. Oh, yeah, this was it. This was about information. Let me say this. Meta shut down internal research into the mental health effects of Facebook after finding causal evidence that its products harmed users' mental health, according to unredacted filings in a lawsuit by U.S. school districts

against meta and other social media platforms. So would that be information bias? Turn on and research and then off. In a 2020 research project code named Project Mercury, scientists worked with survey firm Nielsen to gauge the effects of deactivating Facebook. According to metadata documents obtained via discovery, to the company's disappointment,

people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison. Rather than publishing those, findings are pursuing additional research, the filing states met a called off further work and internally declared that the negative study findings were tainted by the existing media narrative around the company. Privately, however, a staffer insisted the conclusions of the research were valid according to the filing. Is that user bias? I would, I'd say it definitely

could be user bias, but I would actually have to see the research. I mean, there's so many other variables like you want to know the how many like participants were involved like what's your statistical in meaning like how many participants were there therefore you know your bell curve is going to be a lot more I guess a lot more valid you're going to have more statistical significance the the higher number of participants are involved in the research for all we know there's 20 people that they did research on on Facebook right but if they said like no we did research on 200,000 people.

Okay, now you got statistical validity, but I need to see this research paper because one person's saying that there's user bias, and then there's another person saying, no, the results are actually scientifically valid. So that person may actually have bias because they're like emotionally attached to all the research

they did. Who knows? That's what you're saying. This could be like a user bias on top of user bias. A user biased sandwich. Yeah. Oh. Bias the sandwich user bias. It's the new bond me, dude. Bring it back up, I want to see a little bit more information. Let me see if it tells us.

Because it is interesting to think, though, that I noticed after only a week, people were getting better. This is allegedly, the full record will show that for over a decade. We have listened to parents' research issues that matter most and made real changes to protect teens. Go further, see. Okay, the allegation of meta, burying evidence on social media harms is just one of the many in late Friday filing by Motley Rice,

a law firm suing meta, Google, TikTok, and Snapchat. chat on behalf of school districts around the country. Wonder if we get in touch with them. That sounds like kind of an interesting lawsuit, doesn't it? Just to see, like, what are they learning and what information have they learned? Broadly, the plaintiffs argue the companies have intentionally hidden the internally recognized risks of their products from users, parents, and teachers. I want to see the research.

And I want to see if they conducted it or if it was conducted by a second party or third party um that's going to be a huge part of it and i mean australia just recently did a social media ban i saw that kids under ages 16 i believe um why is the australian government banning social media for under 16s the government says it will reduce the negative impact of social media's design features that encourage young people to spend more time on screens um 10 platforms are currently included in the band facebook instagram snapchat threads tick tock x youtube red and streaming platforms like Kick and Twitch. A study commissioned earlier in 2025

found that 96% of children aged 10 to 15 use social media and that 7 out of 10 of them have been exposed to harmful content. This includes misogynistic and violent material as well as content promoting eating disorders and suicide. One in seven also reported experiencing grooming type behavior from adults or other children and more than half said they've been the victim of cyberbullying.

I think, shit, I'm not even a child. child and all that's happened to me on there yeah i'm a damn adult some that shit hurts yeah what do let's say how will it work or when they're imposing it i just want to get that information out in this dude go back up it takes meta about an hour and 52 minutes to make a to make 50 million dollars in revenue that's australian revenue that's crazy wow australia's social media ban for children under 16 officially started on december 10th so they're in it minute. If you're an Australian kid, shit, I don't know if this is illegal to have kids call. But call and tell me honestly, what do you think? Do you think it's good? Are you pissed about it?

What are the feelings right now? Yeah. Hit me with a couple of, hit the hotline, 985, 664, 9503 and just let it drop, drop, and don't be some fake weirdo pretending with an Australian accent. Yeah. Who's obviously a pervert or whatever. We want, we want real kids to call in, okay? No, I mean, Australia, when it comes to science and research, they, they, they, they, We are very thorough. I went to school there for a year. You did? I did my junior year.

And, like, they have, like, I went there for their science programs. Their research programs are some of the best in the world. So if they've actually done proper research to back this up, I believe that it's probably valid science. And was that in Sydney? It was in Brisbane. Oh, yeah. Get out of Brzy. And, uh, yeah.

Dude, the Brisbane Lions, dude. Yeah. Yeah, I watched them play. No way. Yeah. I love the Lions. Dude, the Brisbane Lions, bring them up. And the wallabies.

Oh, yeah, the brizzy lines, dude. Yeah. Yeah. Bring up Mitch. There he is, voice. Klaus. Yeah. Dude, yeah, I love the Brisbane Lions, dude.

I went over there and one night with Mitch had a good time. I love Australia, brother. It's great. Yeah, I miss it. I'm going to go back some, hopefully next year. Did you find, are you married? Yes. Okay.

Yeah. Is there a Stephen Wilson III? No, there isn't. No. No, no, I don't have any biological children. I have a stepson named Henry. I've been helping raise since he was about four years old. Oh, nice.

He's my boy, and yeah. Pretty cool kid? Incredibly cool kid. He's such a great kid. I'm very blessed. What do you admire about him? He's, well, he's so different for me in the best ways. He's very intelligent.

and very collected and calm um and very um i i would say he's more ordered than i am um in a lot of ways he's he's got i think this incredible constitution about him and uh he's he's got a very calm constitution um which is not what i grew up around like i grew up around a a lot of noise and a lot of chaos and a lot of energy and he is he's like um he's like a rock in a raging river that will not move you know and i just i love that about him and he's he's a very strong and smart young man very much into moitai kickboxing and uh we started in boxing and yeah he's he's my dude and my dad was a stepfather not just a father he had he remarried married after my mother and a couple times he didn't have the best luck with the ladies

but a couple of his wives had stepchildren and he really taught me how to be a good stepfather I got to say well not by teaching me but just by example like his faith was led by his works not his words what's one of the toughest things about being a stepfather kind of that people don't really see or that they may see and you may have your own that you may have some specific thoughts about um well i mean i was not just a step i'm not just a stepfather i was a stepchild so i remember the perspective as a stepchild so i go into my step parenthood as a stepchild oh okay so i have something that a lot of step parents that don't have i have like a really unique perspective of what it was like to grow up with step parents you've done the r and d yeah i've done the r and d i've had the

experience. I've had multiple step parents. I didn't just have, I didn't just have one set. You have a trial sample. I had like, yeah, I had a lot of variability. Variables, yeah. Okay, there we know. I love this. So I got some good data there. And one thing I just remember, and this was never a conversation, my dad just loved his stepchildren like us. There was never like, I feel like a lot of step parents, if they have biological children and stepchildren, they will black well i love you just like i love him and he'll say that he never said that that i can remember he just did that that was what his that's the lesson that i learned is that it has nothing to do with words has everything to do with your actions and um so i really just tried to be the best

stepfather i cannot talk about being a stepfather got to talk about anything that makes sense just be and um yeah i think it's i think it's tough it's like it's sometimes easier for me to love a stranger than it is like somebody close to me i feel like in a weird way yeah yeah i mean there's you know a familiarity breeds contempt that's an old saying and you know the more familiar you become with somebody the more contemptuous you can become oh yes naturally disputes yeah so like a stranger is without contempt because there's no familiarity there And, you know, that's, I guess, the kind of the battle of love because the more you love somebody, the more familiar you become with them. And, like, I guess that is, like, how do you balance contempt and love?

Because contempt is going to kind of creep its way in or somehow. Resentment, something will get in there. Something negative will come in there. The more and more you love somebody. And, you know, maybe that's just, you know, the darkness balancing out the light. But, you know, I think just acknowledging it and knowing that it's there is really the big part of it. Because, like, the fear or the panic behind it is the lack of understanding behind it. Really, fear is most of the time just the lack of understanding.

And fear, sometimes they're staying in there and you don't, it's like if you really looked at it for a bit. But sometimes I'll just feel a fear and react. I'll do that for decades. But that really looking at what's going on here? what's really got me here what am I written you know and sometimes just you could figure it out and you're free of it

you know you can at least have a see when it's standing there you know but I'll let a damn thing Michael Myers me out there forever and I won't even go out there and realize this is just a damn cardboard cutout of some old bullshit yeah it's didn't even fucking

nothing's even in this costume anymore and I've still been acting this way because part of me I get something out of pretending that's still real too yeah i get an excuse you know i get to keep living my life a certain way when i pretend that that old boogeyman is still new you know not saying that that happens a lot but i'm just saying that that that hasn't been a part of my story at times probably and

sometimes i didn't realize it um it's wild what the mind can do those like my dad took me deer hunting and i think that was the best thing he could have done for me not it's just the boxing you know you you deal with a lot of fear in boxing because you don't understand certain things but I remember like you know when you go deer hunting you go out especially if you if you morning hunt you you go out about an hour before sunrise into a pitch black woods and you'll walk a quarter mile into a pitch black woods and my dad would post me up against a tree with a shotgun in my hand not even a tree stand or anything. Damn.

Post me up against a tree and then he would go off about 500 yards other way because he'd have to be far away because I could shoot him or he could shoot me. Like you can't be in range of each other's shot

because we're shooting slugs. And but I just remember like okay getting out there an hour before sunrise it would be pitch black and he would walk me out to this tree and you couldn't see nothing. And like I remember thinking

like he would walk out here by himself all the time and I was like man that's crazy and uh and he would sit me up against a tree in the pitch black and it would just be pitch black and then he would go off into his tree and i would be there for at least 45 minutes in the darkest woods you can imagine hearing everything crick and crackle and you know move around shuffle through leaves is that a wild boar is that is that is that you know is it a hooker is that a cougar that uh you'd hope you'd hope you'd hope you'd I hope it was a hook, but it never was, dude.

It was like a bore. Yeah, or just a squirrel. Yeah, or a raccoon, like it had gotten shoes somewhere. Like a rabid raccoon. Yeah, but no, I just remember then the sun would slowly start to come up and the light, you would start to understand the woods that you didn't have understanding of like 45 minutes ago. And you'd start to see it.

And then it was like, okay, it become, literally as the more and more light crept into the woods, the more understanding you got of the woods and what it looked like, what it was made of, what kind of trees, what kind of animals that were making all these sounds. And by the time the sun was up, there was nothing in that woods that was scaring you anymore. So it was really, you know, your fear was what you didn't understand and what you couldn't see. The woods did not change in the presence of light, the lack thereof. It was the exact same woods that it was 45 minutes ago because the squirrels don't care. about dark and light you know they just they live you know they're always up to some

bullshit or whatever yeah they ain't just they're afraid of the dark yeah they ain't afraid of other men either apparently some of these young bucks i've seen a lot of squirrels gerbils gosh he catch me a little bit of ridiculous richard gear burbles baby oh those are the old days dude remember how there was crazy rumors yeah i know we were just talking about that like richard gears gays to put squirrels up his butt or whatever and people like what but somehow that made it around society no i know yeah i don't know yeah that was that made it to my tiny little small town in southern indiana we were just like what are we talking about i guess maybe that is the downside of social media is that those old bullshit rumors don't come up anymore because someone would

eventually it would it'd be all over ticot in a day and then someone would be like yeah someone and be like, this is a bunch of bullshit. Yeah. And then be like, he used to be able to lie to people. Yeah. My dad's a skydiver. Yeah.

Like, oh, he'll be home any minute. You can lie to people all the time. You're like, I'm a lawyer. They're like, you're in seventh grade. What are you talking about? You're like, yeah, whatever. The defense rests. Duke Youser, you heard of it?

Oh, Duke Yasser was good, huh? That's show. You could become a doctor at like age 12. Yeah. Like, man, the world was wild. They just did whatever they want to in the 90s. Richard gear, gerbils,

children, doctors, Dugie Hauser. To be young, huh? Yeah, saved by the bell. Oh, I saw, I was at the U.S.

he fights the other day, and I saw Mario Lopez. Oh, wow. How's that? He looks younger than when he was, when he was,

he's got, like, his mullet back. He's just walking through. Look, what grade is? He was like in seventh, eighth grade now. Still wearing like those

leotards and stuff. The unitards. Yeah, the unitarred. Yeah, bro, he looks even better than that now. I don't even know what happened. He was incredible.

Yeah, he was like, yeah. He's every ethnicity, too. Looks like he's still captain in the wrestling team. Oh, dude. Oh, God, yeah. Oh, geez. Sorry. But yeah, guy looks healthy.

What I'm saying is this, whatever, dude. I like women. But what I'm telling you is, will you have kids? Have you owned your thing? I don't know. I'm pretty good. I think, you know, we talked about it.

We've also talked about adopting kids. But, you know, I don't know. I don't know. I've got a lot going on right now. I got Henry. I've raised, I mean, I know what it's like to raise a child. I know what it's like to love a child. I know what it's like for a child to love me.

I'm not missing anything. So, but you never know. You know, you never know. We could have a child. Right now, my life is very, very busy. And I think I have, other things that I'm supposed to be doing right now rather than raising a baby at this particular moment in my life

and I have some I have a lot of work to do right now and maybe maybe a child will be in the future that's fair but um but you ask about nieces and nephews yes I do um I have quite like all my siblings have children and um yep I'm wild uncle Stephen that goes around the world singing his songs they're a little bit i'm sure they're like what the hell is this dude because all my family like are still in my hometown they work on cars and they're very it's very much a small town life and then my weird ass does what he does but they they love it though

oh i bet they're so proud of it's cool oh yeah they i don't think they know what to think about any of it because they've seen me kind of live multiple lives in front of them that's been one wild thing to see because my siblings had their children very young just like my my parents did and so my niece a lot of my nieces and nephews are older now so that they remember me when i was a scientist and that's all i was doing and then they remember when i quit my science job and i was waiting tables and bartending and just trying to get a publishing deal and then they remember the guy that got a publishing deal and was writing songs for other people and my dad recording them on the big phone and all that and now there's this chapter so they've kind of got to see their uncle go through

multiple identities so if anything i hope that it's been you know helpful for them to see that you're not stuck in any particular life like you can live multiple lives you can do all kinds of things you know um amen and i i think it's important for them to see that you know um you know life has chapters it's not one chapter. You know, and you're writing your own book, and you can make the chapters as long as you want, but there are only so many pages. Amen.

Amen, indeed. Well, thank you for helping us think about stuff, man, and for giving us some of your music over the years. I'd love to get together, and we could talk again sometime. I feel like there's other avenues of things we could talk about. And sometimes I realize it's better, you know, to just get together and talk again sometime. So that way we could go down different roads

and think about other stuff. I think today it's been nice to just talk about, like, familiar relationships and how some things can influence you and, yeah, what it's like living like your father's dream out.

We never talked about the theory of evolution, but we can get to that next time, maybe. Yeah, we can. I'll put a whole presentation for you together. Well, I'll do more R&D while you're going. I think I might hit a pet and zoo or something while you're going

and see if I get a little bit more research done, dude. Well, I got to say I probably owe you money because I feel like I could have paid a therapist a lot of money. I've never had therapy in my life, but I probably do need it, haven't. But you said something that was so, like, insane earlier about the quiet part, you know, about do you think, you know, you were quiet because you didn't want to affect the world around you? Yeah. I think, like I said, that really rocked my world, so to speak. I'll be thinking about that for a long time. There's certain things that we as songwriters say to sometimes that somebody,

and it kind of flips a switch or it makes them think about something they've thought about for a long time, totally differently, and that was a paradigm shift, and I thank you for it. So if anything, I walked away with an incredible piece of not. that I, like I said, I could have, could have never even found in therapy. And if I had, it would have cost a lot of money. So thank you. Oh, you won't. You're welcome, man.

No, you've already, you've paid me, you paid in advance, dude. So many times I've listened to your songs in moments where I needed something or to process something or just to remember my father, you know? Like, you know, one thing about my dad, I remember he liked to whistle and he had change in his pockets all the time. So if I hear change, you don't hear change in people's pockets anymore. They used to be a thing, you know, like an older man needed to have change in his keys in his pockets. And now, like, a lot of car doors are just auto entry and it's hooked to your phone and people don't have change anymore.

But that, like, when I want to think about my dad, I'll, like, that's one of the first things I'll lay there and think about is the sound of change in somebody's pocket, kind of, you know. That was his song. Yeah. Yeah. That was his song. That was, like, my dad always whistled. He always had a song in his head. He was always whistling a song or humming a song or singing a song.

he was a song like he was either writing a song wave or or just you know being a song without being one yeah but you know like yeah there there was always like a sound to him it sounds like your dad had the same sound oh yeah he was a joyous instrument but yeah if we think of ourselves as a song it's like what song am i when i go into the room with people and you know and you can be a different songs sometimes you're a separate song maybe when it's just you by yourself or or your music's kind off and you're just sort of listening but yeah it's like what kind of song do i bring into the world you know and then do i just play the same song over and over again and maybe i do that because i just it's therapeutic to myself you know um yeah i don't know it's but it's been fascinating man it's been

fascinating to be a fan of years it's been fascinating to um get to share you music with other people i've done that a bunch to connect with them thank you you know tell my brother like hey man i love this song you know and and then he can call me back and like oh i see why you like it you know and just things like that that uh that can bring people closer together so thank you so much man thank you you shared this music our music my music a lot on your show and you've talked about it a lot i remember randa lambert was in and we both loved you and we yeah well everybody loves to talk about you behind your back stephen so i figured we would do it in front of you well i'm grateful either way that anybody is talking about this music and you've you've been an early champion theo oh well

i don't know if that's true but thank you dude and evan bartels is another great guy if you're listening Yeah, he has music. God. I mean, there's just some people that can just make me feel something, you know? And so thank you, dude. Thank you for helping us feel. Would you honor us and play a song or two before you leave?

Let's do it. Let's go. All right, let's do it. We'll play some Gary. Let's do it, man. Ladies and gentlemen, Stephen Wilson, Jr. Thank you, sir. One, two, three, four.

Gary these days been lying in his bed man Working on the same car going on a decade Scribble's on drum mount don't draw attention I never really notice but now that I mention it There ain't a lot of boys named Gary these days Born with a cigarette glued to their face Fix about anything a hammer can't handle Saving all the money cause a Gary don't gamble

Ain't a lot of girls gone by Debbie anymore But they got the same nicotine pouring out their pores Time leaves town but the minute hands stays There ain't a lot of boys named Gary these days Gary these days been worried about the bad news there ain't a lot of teenagers filling up the church views no burning bush lights don't talk to his brother

the people even still say grace before supper there ain't a lot of boys named Gary these days Born with a cigarette glue to their face. Picks and bound anything a hammer can't handle. Saving on the money cause of Gary don't gamble. Ain't a lot of girls going by and Debbie anymore, but they got the same nicotine corn at their course. Time leaves town, but the men at hand stays.

There ain't a lot of boys named Gary these days. Hey, every no man gets a damn thing When it takes it out for a spin for a sneaking day He believes in God who believes in a little black handpiece On the stone this day I had a weird suspicion with the light out on the front porch A hard medication poured down where the drain pours He holds his left arm

Will his parakee prays Has anybody seen Much of Gary these days Has anybody seen much of Gary these days? No, no, there ain't A lot of boys. Ain't a lot of boys. Ain't a lot of boys.

Ain't a lot of boys. Yeah. How do you do it like that. I do it like that. fun. It's almost like the door closes on it or something. It's like the, you know, Gary dies, and it's almost like the door closes on Gary. It's Gary said. It is, and there's not enough Gary's out there. There's not. I mean, they're a Gary breed.

Dude, well, they should have a, they should have a museum that has Gary's in it. I agree. You know, I always thought there would be a great idea for a Gary Busey Museum called the Gary Buseam. Oh, I like that. Yeah. The museum, yeah. He should have that. I think so.

And you go in and it's just like a bunch of point break memorabilia. Yeah. And like just Busey's. Yeah, a lot of good Bucy stuff. Yeah. He was in a... Make it too. Yeah, a lot of movies and some of his cameos even does now.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, he like breaks the fourth wall. I love that about him. He looks at the camera. You will notice that? Like in movies, like he looks at the... I don't know if I noticed it as much. But now that you say it, he breaks the forth of existence of being human.

He does, yeah. He shatters right through it. He speaks in acronyms. It reminds me of a rare name, dude, that I, or Debbie, we had, was that Debbie in the song? Debbie, yeah. We had, what was our, Miss Robin. That was our lady at our kindergarten, and I would not sleep. I couldn't nap time or whatever.

So she started to notice it, and she'd let me go outside and watch her smoke when we're kids. And her hair, she goes, if you can't sleep, you can come watch me smoke. And sometimes I would need... That was your Debbie. And sometimes I would need some sleep. I'd be like, I'm going to sleep today or whatever. But then probably two days out of the week, I'd go out there.

Watch robin smoke. Tell me about her husband and stuff like that, and her hair was kind of like this feathered sort of kind of cut. Yeah, that's a total Robin. She looked like, I think she looked exactly like a man, but she was beautiful out of me. She was probably one of the hottest. She was just a woman that would talk to me, so she was stunning.

It was incredible. God, there was something like that. Just to watch her robin smoke, not the bird. yeah the human yeah human robin um we talk a lot about your your quote i know it's not your quote but grief is only love that's got no place to go we talk a lot about that man on here we've mentioned it a few times um you think you could play that for us i could yeah i'd be happy to would you mind it'd take just a second for me to tune up for it okay Life is a battlefield

And it'll drag you right through hell Lights like a rattlesnake The kind that you just don't see on the trail And I miss my father every day The kind of pain I pray don't fade away away for the ones who are guide me down a road. Yeah, grief is only love. There's got no place to go.

Come my great granddad in the ground and all the ghosts in my own town. Yeah, they're the ones that find me down a road. Yeah, grief is only love That's got no place to go Yeah, grief is only love I know The world is a cannibal

So deal with the feelings you can't hide God gave us alcohol When we need to leave them all inside And I don't feel like crying But I just keep crying For the ones above To guide me down a road Yeah grief is only love

That's got no place to go For my great granddad in the ground All the ghosts in my hometown Yeah, they're the ones to find me down a road Yeah, grief is only love That's got no place to go Yeah, grief is only love Grief is only love

Grief is only love Grief is only love. I don't feel like crying, but I just keep crying for the ones Goathe me down a road Yeah, grief is only love that's got no place to go So hang on to the hurt me

And let it grab a hold And the only thing for certain is it's out of my control And grief is only love that's got no place place to go Yeah, grief is only love Let's got no place To go Yeah, grief is only love

Grief is only love grief is only love Grief is only love grief is only love Grace is on Yeah Yeah Yeah

That's awesome, man Thank you so well It sounds great, dude, yeah Just thank you, yeah It's just nice. Thank you, Theo. Yeah. Thank you.

Trevin, was that okay? That's fucking awesome. Oh, dude. He's never used profanity in here. So he's going to get into merit. He's never cussing his life. Hey, what's going on, dude?

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, dude. You're awesome. And I love it and thank you for sharing and helping us feel and making it okay for people to feel stuff. And, yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's it's time to feel things. because what else do we have if we ain't got feelings?

I think it's the only thing it separates us from the robots at this point. Yeah. So let's lean into what we got. Amen. Lean into what makes us real. Yes, sir. Stephen Wilson, Jr. Thank you so much, brother.

Thank you. God bless you. You too. Thank you, Theo. Amen. Now, I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. Oh, but when I read.

reach that ground. I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones.