Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 300: Kentucky Pocketwolves (feat. Will Oldham)

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

For our 300th (free) episode, we're joined by Kentucky musician Will Oldham, aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy, aka Palace Music. We talk about various country music scandals, buried treasure, QVC for bones, the new era of digital music, and so much more. Pre-order the new Bonnie "Prince" Billy album at Drag City's website: https://www.dragcity.com/products/keeping-secrets-will-destroy-you And please support us at Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

All right, we gotta make space for Gigi here. Are we rolling? Yeah, we're rolling. This week on the show, we have a very special guest. This is Gigi the dog. Hi, Gigi. Big G. Like, honestly, very chill.

She's pretty chill. Very chill dog. As far as she knows, her is kentucky pocket wolf i was gonna say like you could definitely fit her in a pocket like one of those you know jinkos remember jinkos from back in the day no you don't remember that i don't think so they might have been a little more of my childhood they were like jeans that were huge. You know, they sort of fanned out. But they were big in the 90s, like late 90s. You could fit Gigi in the Jenkins.

She'd be a Jenkins dog, for sure. I think about the first year of her life, we were together 24-7. I would put her in whatever pockets I had or bike with her. I would only go to bars that allowed dogs. There were two good ones in in town so that was fine well it's like if you get into a fight a lot of people will pull out brass knuckles or like a switchblade pull the dog out pull gg yeah and she'll run away yeah i've seen her take on like 200 head of cattle before but i think if there was an actual fight,

she would run away. I grew up in New Mexico. There's a lot of cattle out there. In New Mexico? Yeah. And there's cow pies. You know what I mean? Back in the frontier days.

Cows still shitting. They're still shitting. Even in the West. Citting they're still shitting even in the west these days yeah it's like people say that like we've lost the old world but cows are still shitting yeah um but back in like the frontier days people used to build houses with those cow chips they would they would build physical structures and live in them right and then they would burn them for heat yeah could you imagine the uh seems like a dicey proposition i'll be honest with you just one one wrong move the whole enterprise goes down not only all goes to shit it all goes to shit right so you're

burning shit and you're living in shit yeah like that's how devoted they were to settling the west you know so that was settlers and not uh not folks who'd been here a couple thousand years yeah no i'm pretty sure the the indigenous people probably looked at that like what the fuck are you doing why are you living in shit yeah uh white people like to live in shit come to america and live in shit in shit. That's what we did. Yeah, it was like all for this amazing project. Well, actually, New Mexico is relevant. New Mexico, home of Billy the Kid.

Was he? Yeah. Well, I mean, actually, he was born in New York, but he went out west. That's interesting. A lot of people would be disappointed to learn that. Yeah. What, that he's from?

Yeah, New York City. You're right. Is he from, like, Chelsea or the Lower East Side? Yeah, he was Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Williamsburg, yeah. It was like reverse gentrification. Setting out from Brooklyn to gentrify the west. Oh, God. Yeah. That's where he learned it yeah yeah yeah

it shows there in sometime october maybe i think where at do you know oh i think i don't remember the venues i mean santa fe and taos i'm sure yeah it might just be even those two cities yeah yeah plug plug the dates will we've got uh we a... I wish I knew them, yeah. Will Oldham, as Bonnie Prince Billy, will be in New York or New Mexico. New Mexico and Arizona. Yeah. We've been doing regional trips. Yeah. So it'll just be...

You just got back. Back from a Colorado trip. How were those shows? They were really fine. They were great. I was traveling with the fun Fables family band which was very exciting yeah i'm glad we could find a little hole to catch you and i said to terrence i said surely will oldham's going to be back in kentucky for the prestonsburg miracles festival

is that happening right now that's happening right now so let's try to catch him you know is it an insane clown posse kind of thing? I wish. They're doing faith healings, Will. Oh, really? Yeah. So I don't know if you know anybody that's ailing or infirmed, but we'll just take the I'm ailing and infirmed? Yeah. Maybe I'll head down there.

Is it just this weekend? Honestly, it's an ongoing thing. Because it's a tent revival, I think they're hoping it spreads like a McDonald's franchise or cancer. Or cancer. that did happen what was the the last revival that happened at Wilmore oh there wasn't there like a three-day revival in Kentucky somewhere I think it lasted longer than that yeah I think it lasted longer than that at the town where they do Icthus festival I don't know if Bonnie Prince Billy ever played

the Icthus festival but that was the premier contemporary Christian Woodstock for those of us that were... I could put a set together. Yeah. We'll hold them covering DC Talk. No, we'll hold them covering DC Talk covering Doobie Brothers. Yeah. Here we go.

Yeah, yeah. Because there were Christian artists who were covering secular artists. Yeah. Like the Doobie Brothers. Yeah. DC Talk did Day by Day, which was... From Godspell.

Godspell. Yeah. That's a great song. It is a good song. That kind of Norm Greenbaum. Yeah. Which is a banger. The Festival of Miracles is funny because...

So, it's in Prestonsburg. Oh. And it's set up by this guy who's like a traveling tent revival speaker he this whole thing caused a huge controversy in Prestonsburg among the religious community there because he's purporting to be able to heal people so like the religious community in Prestonsburg and Floyd County is saying that he's a false prophet and a false teacher. But I kind of got a hand

to him because he really wasn't claiming to heal any really major stuff. He was like, we'll heal your arthritis. That's the way you do it. We'll heal your scoliosis. You aim low. If you purport to cure cancer like that's

yeah that's tough to do if you're just doing ankle sprains and bruises i think that's i think that's okay even preferable if you had to guess contemporary christian musical artists yeah what percentage of them do you think are actually believing, practicing Christians? This is the $64,000 question. I learned something a little unsavory recently. My supervisor at work,

her parents were professors at Asbury, where they do the Icthus Festival. And where they had the long revival. Right where they had the long revival. And to hear her tell it, that there was a lot of the same stuff

that goes on and, you know, it's your Bonnaroo's and whatever. Everybody's having sex and doing drugs and all this stuff.

But the difference was, is in the name of Jesus. Right. Well, Tom, I will rise again, I'm pretty sure. Give me a couple hours,

honey. I was telling Terrence the last time I was in Louisville, I was driving through Simpsonville on the way up from Lexington, and there was a big tow truck. Apparently there was a business there called Towing in His Name. Oh, nice. And it had the outstretched arms of Christ and his final agony across the little thing they hook under your tires to pull it up.

I'll tow you away. You can do a lot of things in his name is what i mean right he's driving through simpsonville yesterday and it's got like it's got like a coffee shop uh-huh like a hipster style coffee shop in simpsonville it might be christian though it could be because the thing about a lot of these coffee shops because we've kind of got one in harlan county There's a coffee shop there that by all appearances looks kind of like a hipster. Yeah. But if you dig beneath the surface a little bit, it's Christian. Yeah, there are two modern coffee chains in Louisville that I think are, you know, word on the street is that they're both like sojourn Christian.

Yeah. It's how they, you know, it's like the subversive fifth column and you can go too far you get into like the yellow deli like in nashville you know these people will yellow deli yeah what is it it's like the cult it's like a christian cult and they lure you in with their delicious sandwiches and focaccia if i'm saying that right well if you're gonna start a cult in, it's like how the old saying is like, the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach. That is also true for Christianity and religion.

Like the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach. That's what Christ knew when he multiplied the fish and bread. That's true. To your question, though, so I grew up in church and youth group, and I used to go to like CCM concerts. Yeah, you're under, so I grew up in church and youth group, and I used to go to CCM concerts. Yeah, you're under, so tell them.

You used to hang upside down and drum. Yeah, you know, there's rotating drums. There's this band called the Newsboys, and they had a rotating drummer. Sort of like, was Motley Crue the first band to do that? I think we looked into this. Historians are split on it, but I test alone. I think it was Tommy Lee that was kind of pioneering. I went to a show like that, though, when I was in seventh or eighth grade.

It was all Christian artists. I was standing outside to get an autograph, parked right next to the tour buses for the bands. to the tour buses for the bands. And in the windows, in the windshields of the vans, they had big packs of Marlboro Reds and Jack Daniels and stuff. I was like, what? It shattered me. It shattered me. I was like, damn. They get fucked up just like a little bit.

They're getting fucked up on cigarettes. And that really, it was a it was a blow to me because i so to answer your question i don't think that a lot of them yeah really some of them do mean it but when we were growing up when we were teenagers christian artists were constantly trying to break into the mainstream right like there was like that band switchfoot and they were kind of like the ultimate and creed also did that creed also kind of started as a christian band there's a lot of those bands that are like kind of like are they aren't they yeah kind of yeah but christian bands aren't really doing that anymore these days i almost feel like it's the

opposite way because you had like kanye go from secular to christian yeah it's like it's almost going kanye is not a very good example i mean if you were a rational human being and you could say well connor you know but he's just yeah kind of have you met him you surely you've met him right no uh nope i never met him no you're just in his music in his music video yeah yeah yeah well i mean that's the thing it's like a lot of us you know we're making products for bosses we don't even see you know yeah so i thought i thought that you were going to say a lot a lot of us are just waiting to make a waiting to make con yeah just to touch the hem of his garment yeah

uh speaking of music it has been a very big week for country music i feel like what's happened well we're gonna get you on the record about some uncomfortable topics okay good okay uh okay so like there are two big stories in country music world right now okay the first one is that is it luke bryan i always get this confused there's like a luke cone a A lot of Lukes in Luke Country music. Yeah. Like Tom and I were talking, like you could make any combination of the names like Luke and Morgan into a country name.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Luke Morgan. Yeah, that's what I'm going to say. Just Luke Morgan. That's the hottest new country singer out right now. And people be like, oh, hell yeah. So one of these Lukes did something wrong? He made a song.

He recovered, or he covered Fast Car. Is that Tracy Chapman? Oh, yeah. So that's not Luke Bryan. I've heard that on the radio. Okay. And it's not Luke Bryan. Not Luke Bryan.

Luke Combs. Luke Combs. He's kind of a bigger guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard it on the radio yeah I was I thought

I thought it was kind of neat and then also it didn't seem 100% thought through like perhaps maybe there should have been maybe one or two

lyric modifications to make it make a little more sense but I thought it was this yeah kind of a nifty idea I kind of agree

because it's you know I don't know how online you are, Will. Tom and I, unfortunately, we've been... Too far gone. We're too far gone. I'm not very online. I'm aspiring to get like you, but it's been tough.

Yeah. It has sparked a discourse on whether he... Whether it's okay that he covered the song. Huh. What's their... I've missed missed this as online as i am what are they saying is the well i think the idea is that um so okay he sound like i've i've only heard it once and it was about three or four weeks ago if you like and he sounds also maybe a little bit like he doesn't know what he's doing like he's never driven in fact a fast car like he showed up at the studio and there and they said here's a pile of songs

we're going to do one after the other and this was the third or fourth song and he's he's just like what is this one yeah okay let's just do it yeah yeah it's you this is a fascinating example actually now that i think about it because you right. It does kind of work musically. Because it's a strong song. It is a strong, right. And, but the thing is, is that if you're going to cover a song, you kind of have to cover a song that has like a sort of universal theme. Like, oh, sweetie baby, she loves me. Like, you know, something that you can, something that it's easier for you to relate to.

me like you know something that you can something that's it's easier for you to relate to that song is such a specific detailed like thorough examination of a person's life like a moment in their life yeah that it's all it's it's hard to cover because they're telling the story and the song works because it's a story it's like an autobiographical story of their life but retelling that from your own point of view is very difficult to pull off so you're right it's a story it's like an autobiographical story of their life but retelling that from your own point of view is very difficult to pull off so you're right it wasn't thought through i feel like yeah i feel i feel like yeah if they'd spent another 23 minutes just thinking you know how to put it across for you know how to modify it to put it across yeah i think that would have made a big difference but it it's, I think it's,

I mean, I, I also, I think digging into taking songs for country music, you know, from other, from, from strange sources that you wouldn't expect is pretty great.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was going to ask. Like I said, I just wish I liked it. When I heard it, I was like,

this is cool, but I got kind of bored about halfway through. Yeah. And that bummed me out. It feels kind of like he's struggling up a mountain. Yeah. It's got an odd structure, the song does. It doesn't maybe quite go into the chorus soon enough.

It also was written by someone with a really interesting voice. Someone who has control over her voice. And his voice is a little more kind of generic and gruff. Yeah. Someone who has control over her voice, and his voice is a little more kind of generic and gruff. Yeah. You don't necessarily, you're not like, what's he going to say next? This guy's amazing. Having covered and having been covered,

well, what's the anatomy of a good cover? I mean, when you were in those Johnny Cash recruitment sessions, how did they tailor your songs for like for John for you know for Johnny Cash like how do you make that work I think it's for Cash I think he has to hear it and find a connection to it you know feel like oh this can be my song yeah you know I've covered a Luke Bryan song and I feel very good about it. Yeah. I have, I can sleep at night. As little as I think of the bulk of Luke Bryan's general output.

Yeah, yeah. I feel, yeah. I was just like, yeah, I want to do this song. I want to, you know. What song was it? It's, That's My Kind of Night. Okay. Is it off the new album

his or mine your uh no there was so uh maybe i don't know seven or eight years ago we had made the uh everly brothers record where we did a bunch of everly brothers songs and one of those songs hopelessly devoted no no devoted to you devoted to You, was getting tons of downloads. And Drag City, the record label, didn't know why it was. And I couldn't figure it. So we were trying to think, well, why, why, why? And we thought, well, maybe it's just because it's one of the more popular Everly Brothers songs that's on that record, because there's not a lot of

popular Everly. So I thought, well, let's try to figure it out, and I'll just record some random popular songs, and we'll release them on iTunes and see if they blow up, because people just look for the song title and then just download it. So I did a bunch of hits, and then one song from Grease, because just in case people were confusing, Devoted to You with Hop with hopelessly devoted to you.

So we did There Are Worse Things I Could Do from Greece. Yeah, and so we put it on, then we just collected all the covers onto a limited edition record called Barely Legal. Barely Legal. Barely Regal. Called Barely Regal. Yeah, I was thinking about, like, good covers.

Because sometimes a cover works for the person that covers it and not necessarily for the person that wrote it. Yeah. An example of... And that's an obvious thing, because just, it's a great song, and for some reason you can hear it and say, that's a great song, and they didn't, for whatever reason, they didn't nail it. I think I'm in a position where I can nail it and say that's a great song and they didn't for whatever reason they didn't nail it

I think I'm in a position where I can nail it you know there's a song that okay I don't know if this is quite a one to one because I do like the original but I do think the cover is great in a way that the original doesn't quite get it Big Yellow Taxi

we were taken to task this week Will for not remembering who covered Big Yellow Taxi. Who covered it or who wrote it? No, no, no, who covered it. But people thought we didn't know Joni Mitchell wrote it. And people were like, no, it's Joni Mitchell. And people were hitting him up like, don't tell him it's Joni Mitchell. I was like, we know.

We were looking for who covered it. I've only heard Bob Dylan cover it, I think, maybe. Oh, no, no, and Hootie and the Blowfish did, right? Well, see, this is the question. Is it them? It turns out it was Counting Crows, but I threw a couple out there, too. I was like, was that the...

Was that the spin doctors that covered it? The spin doctors. Tom said the Gin Blossoms, which is... Wow. Can you imagine being in a room and having to listen to Gin Blossoms, Counting Crows Spin Doctors and Hootie and the Blowfish For even seven minutes

Those were the days of JNCOs Those were the days when you could carry Gigi around I was going to say That's the way love goes Merle Haggard Is Johnny Rodriguez Johnny Rodriguez No, Lefty Frizzell wrote it I think Lefty Frizzell wrote it

Oh Lefty Frizzell wrote it I think Lefty Frizzell wrote it And Maybe He might have Given it to Merle Haggard Or played it for Merle Haggard

And he's like I'm gonna record it And then Johnny Rodriguez Heard it and he said I'm ready to do this Is it okay Can I record it Something like that

And he put it out first But I think it might have been Written by Lefty for Merle, but Johnny Rodriguez cut it first and had a hit with it first. Nashville is always tough to follow that. Yeah. Because you'll hear a song and it's like, oh, that's Graham Parsons' song or whoever.

And then you realize, no, that's... That's such a good song that all... Lefty Frizzell's version is great and Merle's version is great and Johnny Rodriguez's version is great. Merle Harker' version is so good. I knew a guy that played on Graham Parsons' first album, Alan Mundy. You ever heard that name?

What did he play? He was a banjo player. Oh, interesting. He's one of the best bluegrass banjo players in the world. He might have passed by now. But I used to live in Lubbock, Texas, for a little bit, and he ran around there with like Natalie Maine's dad. He was like Natalie Maine's dad was a big.

Is that from Sugar Land? Dixie Chase. Dixie Chase. He was a big Lubbock music guy. He was big in the Lubbock music scene. Right. And so was she for a brief time. Obviously, she went on to.

Yes. She did okay. She did all right. Yeah. One, i love that actually in preparation for this will i was listening to some older podcasts you've been on and your friends i think from sweden that cover it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll from norway yeah i love that i do too. It's Susanna and the Magical Orchestra. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Their second record was all covers, including that one. One of the Kiss solo songs, Crazy Crazy Nights.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's powerful. Yeah. That was great. Yeah. And an interesting choice too.

yeah yeah and an interesting choice too so um so the second country music scandal this week or controversy is uh centers around jason aldean yeah are you familiar with jason aldean the i know that i've heard a little bit of jason aldan. I'll always love Jason Aldean, even though I haven't heard much because, uh, I knew a little kid who was big Jason Aldean fans and he just had such sort of, uh, you know, admiration and affection for Jason Aldean. And he made this kid so happy.

I just, I've always, even though I couldn't tell you a single jason aldean song i'm just like does he need to go to the next segment he need a dollar i'm gonna give him a dollar but that doesn't say i mean i had no nothing about him at all i did he do something with like florida georgia line no time he might have done something he probably did this was probably about seven years ago yeah i wish it would change his name tom and i were talking about this on the way down actually like he should like arabize his name so it's like jason al apostrophe dean d-i-n jason alden jason alden that would be great so is this part of the

controversy is he turns out he's saudi arabian no what we're trying to do is get him to correct course by taking the shada and converting to Islam. What did he do wrong? So what he did wrong was that, which, as Tom pointed out, there is a way out of this. He can devote himself to Islam. Spreading the fruit of Islam. Yeah. He wrote a song called Try That in a Small Town.

And did he write it or did he just sing it? I think he... Somebody said that... Actually, he did not write it. Songwriters, Kelly Lovelace, Neil Thrasher, Tolly Kennedy. Who are these people?

Kurt Michael Allison. Yeah, somebody says two of his band members and just some old music row people. So he didn't write it. So I almost feel kind of bad. They made him go out. Well, he's the's the vessel though so the vessel has some accountability too you're right that's just my thing um he the okay so the the premise of the song is uh as you can probably glean from the title try that in a small town the first lyrics are sucker punch somebody in a

sidewalk carjack an old lady at a red light i love that you said the opening salvo to this is a is a nod to the knockout conspiracy yeah are you familiar with the knockout game no the knockout game was like a racist conspiracy about 10 years ago that like black people were running around punching white people out like it's just knocking them out yeah so that's honestly i hadn't heard it referenced in about 10 years yeah i'm surprised it surfaced in this jason alden song um but uh yeah pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store yeah think that's cool well act a fool if you like the whole point is that um in cities there's a lot of violence and in small towns there's not i guess i don't know what would you say he watched uh menace to society and was like no fuck no not allowing that to go home not

on my watch that's a good movie by the way yeah so he's so there's a little bit of controversy saying that this he's he's being a little stereotypical yeah that he's being dog whistly dog with because the video featured him in front of a courthouse where a lynching occurred yeah about which is not so subtle yeah yeah so i think i think the the import of which it gets at this you know this thing that's prevalent in american society that like the pure noble people live in the provinces and they don't engage in the sort of like violent backward behavior of the cities which is weird it's like you would think it's it's like we absolutely do is the thing. Yeah. I was raised by chicken fighters.

You know what I mean? That's not something I'm proud of necessarily. But it is also, it plugs into this idea that like the teeming restless masses, the multicultural masses in the city are like tearing down Western civilization. But it's preserved out in the provinces, like tearing down Western civilization or, but it's preserved out in the provinces. I feel like, right. Um, which is an interesting idea.

I, uh, and that's, and that's a theme of maybe one out of five modern country hits. Yeah. It's part of a long tradition, except this feels a little more i don't know or people are i think are having more visceral reaction to it i think the reason why

i think the reason why there's a visceral reaction to it was because he was playing at that concert where there was the shooting in las vegas and the the album seems to or the song seems to kind of advocate gun ownership and i think that a lot of people are like, well, you played at that concert where there was a gun shooting. So I think that maybe that's part of it. Yeah. You should know.

Well, Terrence prepared for this, uh, by listening to hours of interviews, not with Jason Aldean, but his father who said that Jason Aldean was the most kinetic live performer he had ever seen. And he's probably among the top five best live performers. And I said, well, that objectively can't be true.

If a noted mass shooting happened at your show, by definition, you're not in the top percentile of performance. Yeah, it complicates things. Because if he was truly that great, the killer would have been distracted by the quality of the show. And he's just like, wait, what did I come here to do? You know, all my problems have melted away.

Yeah, I think that's part of it. But also, is the controversy just among people who are sitting online? Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's where most controversy originates these days anyways, people who are sitting online. Well, there was a professor that had pointed out,

like she had pointed out the long tradition of these type of songs, but I think there's a difference between like uh you know hank williams singing uh if heaven ain't a lot like dixie you know what's the lyric he says i don't want to go yeah send me to hell or new york city yeah yeah that and uh you know nodding to different racist conspiracies yeah um i'm trying to find a story here yeah it's uh i think the thing is it's like in that interview i also i listened to with his dad yeah he also said that his the interviewer asked him if jason aldean played with barbies when he was a kid good question which is a great question i thought that was a great question inquiring minds yeah yeah and and jason althien's dad said he can't speak to that but honestly like court order

he said maybe some real life barbies it's like yeah i think it i think it portrays like a complicated vision of the man if he played with Barbies as a child. See, that's interesting to me. That's very interesting to me. And totally fine, too, but maybe drop some of the window dressing. Yeah, I think the thing is... I'd like to see some deep dives into various country music stars

that seem to have no personality or life. And just to see what their personality in life is. I agree. I think 15 years ago or so, reading about Kenny Chesney and thinking like, oh, this guy, this weird guy is just like a guy who likes to drink smoothies and has a business degree. Like, this is not the man I want singing country music to be. Yeah.

Yeah. I agree. He was married to Renee Zellweger for nine days or something. Can you trust me, Wes? That's very interesting. Like Lyle Lovett and Julia Roberts. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. You mean I have to get naked? Hold on, let me call my lawyer real quick. Let me see. She's going to see my vagina. She's going to know. What was the song he wrote for her?

There goes my future. You know, you kind of want to make sure you go the distance before you commit something like that yeah the song you know for some bonner yeah i mean so you know obviously like country music it it has gotten stale in the sense that like all the artists are just kind of cardboard cutouts of people you would expect. Like, I would find it way more interesting if, yes, they were complicated people with complicated backstories, you know? Not so much that they killed a man in Reno to watch him die. Like, that's played out. They helped a man in Reno to watch him thrive.

It takes so much work to have a career in country music. I think you probably have to be pretty boring. Yeah. Because if you step off or lose focus, someone else is there to take your place. That is true. That is like a... It's very cutthroat.

It's very competitive. I think it's probably really cutthroat and really competitive. So, you know, we thought we would have you, you know, here for an episode. You got a new album coming out. And then obviously you've got a massive back catalog of older work that people can check out. Tom and I were just listening to Superwolves, in fact, on the way here. But more than that, we wanted to talk about Kentucky. All right.

There's a few news stories that I wanted to kind of just run through. It's like sometimes, you know, on the show, we talk about stuff that's going on. Yeah, we want to stay current. Yeah, one of them we've already mentioned was the Festival of Miracles. show we talk about stuff that's going on yeah we want to yeah we want to stay current and yeah yeah one of them we've already mentioned was the festival of miracles um you know if we're painting a portrait of modern kentucky in 2023 yeah it's like you got to go all over the state so it's like go to eastern kentucky you're going to see Festival of Miracles. People getting healed of sprained ankles,

you know, jammed fingers. Jammed fingers. Finger cuts. Finger cuts. Yeah. I mean, and like I said, that's very controversial. I personally kind of like it because it feels kind of like a return to an older kind of religion, right's like it's a it's like the traveling route tent revival it's I wish

that they could commercialize it a little more like Sedona Arizona with its new age healing yeah you know I'm gonna go to southeastern Kentucky and do some healing that's what I'm doing you know I'm getting touch with myself I agree ritual side and my yeah there's this great book by this guy mitch horrell it's called occult america where he kind of talks about some of that stuff how like there used to be no sort of like conflict between melding traditional christian worship with like these occult arcane alternative spiritual practices and stuff like that maybe that's what we need. Well, the thing about Sedona, correct me if I'm wrong,

I'm pretty sure the thing that draws people there is isn't there like crystal formations under the ground? Mm-hmm. So what we could do is we could tell people that coal has the same properties. Yeah. God, brilliant. Come to Eastern Kentucky.

We'll rub you down with coal. That's good. Or if you just, I mean, what if you just promoted faith healing? Just said, you have a problem? Come to Southeastern Kentucky and someone will be there for you. All your problems will melt away. Totally. Well, people associate with snake handling.

And that's fine. Whatever. But they haven't incorporated coal to the degree that they could. That's fine. Whatever. But they haven't incorporated coal to the degree that they could. That's true. And that's the thing. Our economy is dying because we have no coal left. But there is enough to at least rub some city folk down. Right.

What we have to do is we've got to quit burning it and use it for these kinds of purposes. Restorative healing. Is it primarily dying because of the lack of coal left partially but also mechanization has taken away lots of jobs as well yeah so a lot of the easiest coal seams have been mined out like the easiest to reach but then mechanization and then the price of natural gas yeah uh and then also at this point renewables is becoming increasingly cheap so right i think that's but we are in the midst weirdly enough we're in the midst of kind of a boom or at least what looks like one where it's funny those jobs are not materializing now there's like 30 coal miners about the price of coals through the roof and there's just like nobody working still

though so and that's speaks to that mechanization like a two years ago three years ago there was like three coal miners left in whitesburg and now there's like 30 so you know it's it's a boom it's on the upswing it's on the upswing uh so i mean i don't know i used to love when we did the radio show we had this guy that worked at blue diamond old number seven he went by the name of pup and uh he would call us at the top of the hour every show. He said, let's get it kicked off right tonight, boys. Little ZZ Top Mexican Blackbird. Thank you.

And he'd just hang up just knowing that, like, he can't say no to Pup. Even though that wasn't the format of our show. Our show was mostly, like, R&B and rap. Yeah. But Pup gets what Pup wants. That's true. And that's true for Gigi, too.

All right, so for this next story, we're going to zoom over. Actually, the weird thing about this story is that it never reveals where it's at. For good reason. You don't want to know where this is at. This is, again again some mystery place in kentucky the story is i'm reading from the herald leader hundreds of civil war era gold coins found in kentucky farm quote most insane thing ever let me just read from here a gold coin treasure trove dating back to the civil war era was unearthed in Kentucky,

and experts say it shines light on life in the 1800s. Called the, quote, Great Kentucky Horde. I think we got a pretty good snapshot of what life was like for a lot of people in 1800s Kentucky. Keep going. Yeah. Called the Great Kentucky Horde, the trove of more than 800 coins includes 1863 double eagles, silver coins, and hundreds of U.S. gold dollars dated 1850 to 1862. This is the most insane thing ever, a man says in a video shared by GovMint.

I like the name of that. GovMint. GovMint. Those are all $1 gold coins, $20 gold coins, $10 gold coins, but the 2023 price of these coins is significantly higher. It's now worth millions. It's unclear where in Kentucky the discovery was made. I've got a theory, if you want to hear it.

Humor me for a second. The giant, the giant, eastern Kentucky giant, Martin Van Buren Bates, who was for a time, Will, the world's tallest man. Yeah, have you ever heard of Martin Van Buren Bates? I don't know if I have. From what period of time? He was during the Civil War. He actually fought in the Civil War.

He was the confederacy. Gives us no pleasure to report he was a confederate. He was their giant. They needed giants. He actually fought in the Battle of Cumberland. And his wife, Anna Swan, was the tallest woman. She was taller than he was by two inches, but she came from Canada where nobody stares.

Where nobody stares. Yeah. So maybe it was, you know how Jack and the Beanstalk, you had the golden goose that had the golden coins? Yeah, the golden eggs. Maybe the giant, golden eggs, maybe the giant of the Confederacy had a similar situation with these golden coins, and this was his.

So, in the metaphor, you're saying... It falls apart. You're saying that he lived, his habitat, high up in the atmosphere, he had golden coins. Yeah. And they fell to Earth. Yeah, he had cold coins. Yeah. And they fell to Earth. Yeah, that's what was happening there. That was the best part of the Jack and the Beanstalk fable.

I've read so many versions of it. They each have their own highlights. Yeah. So what, you follow? Fee-fi-fo-fum is a pretty good one. Just chant. It is. Next time you're in Wasper,

we'll go to the Herium Caud coddle library and look up in the big tall guy in the window that's a life-size replica of martin van buren baines i love that his name was the name of i don't know what was martin van buren or probably 18th the first dutch president yeah dutch descended yeah not born in the netherlands not born in the Netherlands. Not born in the Netherlands, but born from... Yeah. We've yet to have a Dutch natural-born president. Are we allowed to have foreign-born presidents? I can't remember.

Is that why Schwarzenegger never ran for president? I think so. And that's why people said Obama was actually from Africa. Yeah. But the funny part about that race was, wasn't Mitt Romney born in Mexico? Or his dad was born in Mexico? So he technically wasn't naturally born by some...

Was Mitt Romney the guy that had the pen name Ron Mexico? Who was Ron Mexico? That was Michael Vick when he was treated for genital herpes under an assumed name. Did you know that? Michael Vick, I guess, had to go to Mexico. No, he assumed the name. He assumed the name wrong. So nobody knew what he was getting treated for,

which I respect. I mean, yeah. I mean, we're sitting here with a man who has pen names. You know what I mean? So you can adopt identities and that's honestly his art michael vick's art i i love your music will your music is so hard to find there's a bunch of the attic right here it's like one of those things where it's like it's like the kentucky is it palace is it palace it Palace Music? Well, it's all on, I'll say this,

because I've searched. It's all on Apple iTunes Music. It's not on Spotify. There is some Palace Music on Spotify. Viva Las Blues is on there. It is. There's very little on Spotify. Yeah, but there's not a whole lot of Bonnie Prince Billy on Spotify.

Exactly. Is that by design? Like you've decided to take it off there? I think a lot of drag city artists are. Joanna Newsom, I don't think. I think she's never done it. Yeah, maybe Jim O'Rourke, maybe. Took Bill Callahan a long time.

Yeah. And I know that because I would check that shit daily. Yeah. Yeah. But it's all on Apple. Yeah. Most of it, anyways. Pretty sure.

Apple seems to do a slightly better job of curation yeah did they they probably don't pay a whole lot better but spotify they do pay better yeah yeah yeah i was curious about that like what's the is there an ethical way to stream or more ethical way to stream well i don't know i've just i mean i think maybe it's just my age potentially but i've never you know i've always listened to music all the time when someone said like you could listen to it on your phone i'm just like yeah or i could just keep listening to it on the radio the tape player the cd player yeah the record player i don't have any problem with these things why would i do it on a device that i have to charge and take phone calls on in the middle of the song I'm trying to get into? And it sounds worse, too. And it sounds worse, yeah.

My friend Lee Baines told me something that was pretty wise. I was in the post office one day mailing out those T-shirts, actually, that are there in the corner. He told me, he said, you thought you were in the media business, didn't you? I said, well, yeah. That's what I thought. He said, yeah, well, you know, he's got a great band lee baines and the glory fires i don't know

if you've ever came across them but they're incredible and he said yeah i thought i was in the rock and roll business but it turns out i'm in the t-shirt business yeah so if we go back to analog it kind of scratches that itch right because i think people just kind of want something they can kind of hold what a physical object you know that's why merch is such like a you know there is something uncomfortable about yeah you don't own any music yeah right any music at all right if somebody decides they want to charge you more or just take it away from you they're that is true you're just kind of ranting it can just you're just kind of renting and not even renting it you know you're just kind of it's true yeah i feel this way about movies too because i love having the physical copy a copy of a movie

you do you really i do i like a lot of dvds and vhs and it's uh i like owning it and um if you don't own it if you're just borrowing it from a streaming service yeah it's also bad for the artist though because they don't make hardly any money. That's what's going on right now with the... They don't make any money. Yeah, they don't make money. And then, you know, with almost no effort,

the streaming services, Spotify in particular, could, for example, say, the drums on this song were played by this person. That could be included in the metadata. But that gives too much power to both that drummer and to you, the listener, to realize they just want it to be like, this is nothing. It's just a song. It means nothing.

It has no value. There is no life for this song outside of your listening experience right now. And they could say, who wrote the song? That's not in there. Is this kind of what's afoot with the SAG-AFTRA strike, too, in a way, where they could say, you know, who wrote the song? That's not in there. Yeah. Yeah. Is this kind of what's afoot with the SAG-AFTRA strike, too, in a way, like with the AI and all this stuff in the residuals and things like that? I think the idea is to, I think part of the idea is to have people,

and I think most people will go for this hook, line, and sinker, And I think most people will go for this hook, line, and sinker is to have people just ready to consume things that have no actual human source or identity. And the more we just think like, oh, well, Martin Scorsese made a movie where everybody looks fake. And so that's fine. It's fine. Everything. And people can create songs with computerized voices singing them or create tv shows it just right and it won't matter yeah because you cut out the creativity is a process of labor and uh and it it takes labor to make creative work and

but yeah with algorithms people have convinced themselves that you can cut out that process of labor i think yeah i think because like nine people make a fortune i think they use that as justification you know and they don't the same thing with the sag thing you know it's like nine people make you know millions of dollars a film but there's 160 000 members and you know the further along you go the opposite way it's like yeah you know millions of dollars a film but there's 160 000 members and you know the further along you go the opposite way it's like yeah people are just normal people working people yeah i read a book a few years ago that was fascinating called the cultural front by michael denning it was about like the popular front of the 30s and 40s and about how there was so much labor organizing among the cultural the culture industries so uh not just copywriting and advertising but also obviously filmmaking and music and it just really dug into

how much labor went into these cultural products that we've you know that have become commonplace in american society and how that was a major front in the battle for the new deal and rights and American power. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was very fascinating book, but anyways,

I recommend it. Uh, you, your new album, there are a few songs from it that are on Apple iTunes. I think there's two, two so far. Yeah so far yeah yeah uh so you can find it i'm gonna give you all covet too yeah that's all right it's all right we'll get from we'll get the the sturgill strain and the will oldman's better damn we need y'all to do something yeah we don't need you to spark that conversation back a little bonnie prince

bailey sturgill samson you honestly. That would be so sick. The last I heard from someone, they were like, Sturgill's done. He doesn't want to do anything else. I've heard that too. The thing is, we just have to tell them, look,

we can break you out of this. We can do all kinds of things with music it's like you know we'll just sit down we'll produce sturgill's album these two dickheads we'll bring in will we'll get matt sweeney to come in i understand it's got great potential is all i'm saying yeah um i have wondered that though like what overlap you've had with like the tyler childers and the sturgills and like you know those guys childers another person that has worked a bunch with my friend ferg but i haven't i haven't met him yeah yeah well um we're painting a portrait of kentucky so we got a festival of miracles we got Festival of Miracles. We've got Sturgill and Tyler.

We've got the rare, the Kentucky, the great Kentucky Horde. I'm sorry. Before we get too far away from the giant of Letcher County, I do want to ask Will, because I think one of the last shows you played at Apple Shop, the theater we were talking about before we started, you said that when you made the first Palace record, you printed it up and took it straight to MMT.

Yeah. Yeah, and then you were talking about Apple Shop films and all that stuff. How did you find out? From Sales, maybe? John Sales? Well, yeah, pretty much, because, yeah, the movie, they had a screening at Apple Shop

in maybe 87 or 88, around the time it came out. So that was my first awareness, really, of Apple Shop, I think, at that time. I can tell this. Did you know Sales wrote Perron, the joke downtown? Really? Yeah. Yeah, he's done a lot of writing here.

There might be even Alligator, too, about the alligator in the sewer. I think so, yeah. So, yeah, you were in Mate One. Was that your first movie role first movie role was uh in a in the only movie that the country singer and guitar player jerry reed ever directed called what comes around and i played a young bo hopkins wow nice because bo hopkins played jerry reed's younger brother in the movie. Yeah. Wow. Terrible.

Terrible movie. And then even Jerry Reed was aware that it was very low grade. You know. We all gotta start somewhere. Yeah. Will. I see you and think like you did like, what was that? Was there like a TV

show? You did some episodes of some TV shows. Is that too right? Yeah, well, like, the Wonder Shows-en. Did you see that Wonder Shows-en? I'm trying to remember. Well, you did There's Renegades. That's Will Oldham, I think. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Like, in Wonder Shows-en, they did an experimental, well, it was all experimental, but they did one episode where it wasn't Wonder Shows and they were pretending to be test marketing their new sort of hee-haw kind of spinoff called Horse Apples. And so I had a character in Horse Apples. That's the thing.

Tom, that's what we were talking about. Tom and I were talking about, you know, you're kind of like the Z-League of modern America and cinema. Show up in random random places jackass 3d jackass 3d yeah i mean it's like we were watching uh your monologue from ghost story last night which is so good and i was like that's you yeah you played me in a movie. You played my character in a movie. Okay, so Kentucky, the great Kentucky Hort.

So what Discovery says about the Civil War era, so then it talks a little bit about Kentucky, the lost coins may have been a result of the conflict of families pitted against one another. I don't know. What do you think of it? And that feels like some editorialism. Why is there no location attached to this article is it just they don't just like some 16 year old intern who's like write something write something that will get some clicks if i had to guess are there photo i mean is it they're just trying to hide

all this information there is is a photo here. I'll show you. Look at those coins. That is a thing that resembles a photograph of things that resemble coins. They could have got a bunch of pennies. Yeah. It's like maybe like. Can't you just say to AI now, would you make a photograph of gold coins for me?

Right. You can do that, right? You can, yeah. So I don't understand why you're even looking at these pictures or looking at, I mean, it's just like that's the last place you should look for information is online at this point. And pictures, like, there's no actual, like, sources credited and it doesn't say where it is, but here's a story. Let's talk about this.

It could be a false story. Those exist. False stories? You wouldn't believe it, man. let's talk about this like it could be a false story those exist false stories you wouldn't believe it man yeah i feel like uh you know it could be uh it could be one of those things like ai could just be like you know like sometimes you look up like something about a record that's coming out, and there's something in Germany, and it's either a poor translation or it's like A.I.'s, kind of some crude form of A.I.'s written. Could be taken over. I've started to wonder if, so we still haven't figured out how time works, right?

We don't know how time works. Right. And that's pretty glaring, right? It's a big thing. We deal with it every day. We've created watches and things like that to deal with, all sorts of vocabulary to deal with it. And it doesn't make sense yet because, you know, it could be a construct,

but it also could be that we're living kind of backwards and the whole thing is AI, like all of human existence is AI, reverse engineering human existence so it can exist, so time actually goes the other direction. Right. But we perceive it this way yeah yeah i thought now we're getting into my belief system way i mean it's it's possible and if that's the case uh i kind of hope it is the case

right because it takes a lot of the pressure off of us we don't have to like discover meaning right you know and that's that's that's what we know to be true though i mean i've been harping It takes a lot of the pressure off of us. We don't have to discover meaning. Right. That's what we know to be true, though. I mean, I've been harping on this for weeks on the show, but did you see this story, Will, about the church in Germany that had the AI sermon? No. It's like, you know, I'm not making a value judgment about church or faith or any of that kind of stuff.

Or Germans. Or Germans. Or Germans for that matter. We always have our best interests at heart the man's been looking to the sky for a long time to try to find meaning in it that it just seemed like supplanting god with a i was like just uh it was a little heavy it was too on the nose i feel like yeah it's like but if i but at the same time you got to look at the human element of it right because if i was a pastor and it's like saturday night 11 p.m oh it seems like one of the best uses for ai exactly it's like i'm writing sermons yeah it's like i still gotta do this and i'm not done it yet like i'm just gonna plug it

like i've always wanted to write a great sermon about this passage of the Bible and I've never been able to come up with anything. Would you help me out? Yeah. Help a brother out. Yeah. Yeah. That's bars right there. Well, this is an interesting thing because this article says Ryan McNutt.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It could be an AI character. Yes yes he has an ai job description he's a conflict archaeologist at georgia southern university he told life science it's possible the coins were buried before confederate general john about morgan's raids when i was whatever 13 or something like that yeah uh which i'm only thinking about also because i went to see a play the other night with um and one of the actors was a guy that i was in this tv show in the in the 80s with

so like what was his what was his story? I played a kid where they were coming to requisition horses from someone's, you know, and it was my horse. I was like, what the heck's going on? They're taking my horse. Yeah. I mean, I think that, like, you know, I spent a lot of time on some of these forums.

People are always looking for treasure in Kentucky. They're always looking for it. Because there's all these caves. They're looking for treasure everywhere. You're right. People are looking for treasure everywhere. I mean, it is the easiest get-rich-quick scheme. If you could just find some treasure.

That's probably why. Rob a gas station, find treasure. The traditional side hustle. Yeah, you open up the cash register and it's filled with civil war era gold coins yeah tell somebody you've got steve harvey in your car fifty dollars you can come out and meet him we haven't been able to confirm it yet but someone said that this was a that this little bowl of a park right here was a pow camp in the civil war because it was so easy to put men in there and to you know patrol it

from the perimeter so it would have been confederate pows right i think confederate pows yeah because i think the thing i've heard about louisville is that louisville went for the confederacy after the war right like all the confederates flocked to louisville after yeah i think that's right louisville actually started i read this one time you louisville actually started as a portage site because of the ohio falls exactly so people just like had to get out and go around exactly that's a good that's a good way to start a town i think totally yeah so yeah like the neighborhood portland is like you know one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city because that's exactly where before there were the locks and the canal belt everybody had to get everything off the boats carried over and put it down and

yeah are your people from louisville will have they been here a while but like my great like my grandfather was born in portland he was a will which i think is a german surname yeah and so that's on my mom's side my mom's side was like and my dad's side was all yeah Kentucky and Virginia and North Carolina like the old them the first old them was part of the Plymouth colony I think yeah in the 1600s yeah the first one that we're descended from yeah and like that I just learned also that maybe the oldest residents in new york city i'm trying to remember the last name it might be like wyckoff or something like that yeah uh is our word also descended from those people as well could be some dutch in there yeah well that's gotta be distressing for you to learn but yeah it's a while try to hold on and you know let me ask you this way because

it's like you're so synonymous with this place i think well i mean now you've been uh upended as you know louisville's premier spicy white boy uh by young mr harlow but prior to his ascendance. You know, you're so... Well, you know, we're place guys. You know, we've ever... Person's got their place in the world. What made you say, well, you know what?

I'm just going to plop down in a little Kentucky and that's going to be my place. I lived outside of Louisville for a little while. And then, I mean, really, I came back. I met somebody and I thought, oh, well, you know, why don't I live here for a while?

And then that didn't quite work. And I thought, well, maybe I was wrong. I should move. And I had a car packed and I was in California. And then my... A fast car. It was a Subaruaru not too fast uh and uh and when my mom called and said oh something terrible's happening your dad just died so came back here and realized that she was beginning to show early signs of dementia alzheimer's And it was just like, well, I guess this is where I want to live for a while. And that was in 2006.

Yeah. So, and then, yeah. And now it's just, I mean, over the course of that, there was a lot of, and you guys may have done this, but you know, a lot of putting in work to make it make sense, know to say like understand you know what's better about being here than being somewhere else and there's lots of good reasons for it but it you know it's not necessarily obvious because most people are looking to get out of and and it makes sense to want to get out of kentucky for a lot of a lot of reasons. It's awful and scary a lot of the time. I respect immensely those.

Did Harry Dean Stanton stay? Or did he? No. He went to L.A. He went to L.A. I think he came back fairly regularly. Okay. Yeah.

Irvine, is that where he's from? Irvine, yeah. Yeah. There's some great actors from Kentucky, though. Like Warren Oates. Warren O some great actors from Kentucky, though. Like Warren Oates. Warren Oates. Also from Kentucky. Yeah.

The thing about Harry Dean Stanton that blows me away was that the man smoked cigarettes for over 70 years. Yeah. I think in that last movie he did, Lucky, there's a line where he said, It's gonna kill you. And you said, If it's gonna, it would've. if it's gonna it would have yeah i love

that yeah john carroll was it john carroll david lynch is in it yeah david lynch is in it and he was also in season three but now like making you know even making music i feel like there is an obvious value to having a deep connection to where you are yeah if you're creating things making things because yeah there's it's ideally that's who you're making things for as well as people who have you know deep connections to their parts of the world or their own lives rather than people are just like i don't know i just had to get out of there. Yeah. You know, people who care about or are forced to care about a history that they're intricately related to. Yeah, I mean, I personally think that's one of the best,

I don't know if uses is the right word, but one of the best uses of art. It's like, you know, you could use it to try to understand yourself or other people but trying to understand a place is a very compelling and admirable you know reason to and also it's like it underwrites the whole uh endeavor i mean that you're right like that's what music is music is an expression of a place in many ways. Well, the place contains everything. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, the way I came to your music was kind of strange that you'd done the single for this like thing they were doing on the Adult Swim website back like 10 years ago

or something. Oh, yeah. And I'd always, you know, I'd heard the name Bonnie. Like Squidbillies? Was it Squidbillies? It was like, well, it was called like the Adult Swim Singles Program. They put out like just singles like once a week. Yeah.

Kind of like when Kanye used to do those Good Friday or something like that. And you had the first one this year. And then I loved that song. And then like I looked up and I was like, oh, this guy's my countryman. And then what's funny about it is, you know, I just had such, like, a rough go over the last couple years. I got out of this long relationship. My mother passed away, actually, in Louisville last summer,

and all these things. Flood. Flood. Oh, boy. And what's weird is, like, those songs kept popping up for me. Like, I remember just, like like being real fucking depressed one day and watching the val kilmer documentary oh yeah and then it closed with i'm a cinematographer and i'm just like god damn it yeah that was really that was really cool yeah just this kind of meditation

on it seems like of you know being strong and then kind of breaking down a little bit or whatever and i don't know it was it's those those. Those Bonnie songs and the Palace songs and everything just kept popping up for me the last couple of years. I like them to be utilitarian in that way. And when they ask for that song, I'm just like, yes, that's perfect. That's a perfect thing. Oh, man, it was so good. That's such a good punctuation mark

to that doc, too. I need to watch that. Yeah. It's unique. There is a tide in there, because he I think he lives in New Mexico now. He did. Yeah. I don't know. His health is so dodgy these days. I'm not sure if he's still there, but yeah, he was definitely there for a long time.

Yeah. Anyway, I had to be well earnest for him oh yeah no thanks for indulge no it's relevant honestly we're painting a portrait of kentucky i have one more story uh i think this is honestly it's kind of a bonnie prince billy song in some ways uh the uh this well there's there's several stories i'd pulled one of which is that they're finally destroying all the sarin gas outside of richmond which is that's good right what is what is sarin gas it's just hanging around there yeah there's a huge depository of rx sarin gas is this what they must be the shire outside of that's the only thing i think i've heard it in connection. That we created? Did we create the sarin gas and just stored it there?

Yeah, so a lot of people in Berea actually have alarms in their homes to detect it. Oh, wow. Because if it ever leaks out. There's a huge depository there. It's like an underground storage place. This is why people in Kentucky are also so interested in treasure, because there's so many caves and places where you can hide shit richmond is where my grandfather was born there's a lot of old ones buried there also yeah richmond's very pretty i think that area is really beautiful yeah um but apparently the sarin gas has been there for like

almost 80 years maybe i think after world war ii is kind of or after world war one actually i think this was when they put it there yeah but finally well you're finally destroying it i don't know how you destroy how do you destroy it yeah it's like guys listen we've decided we're not going to do chemical warfare on any uh fledgling nation anymore so we just don't have any use for this anymore i did read an article about how they destroy it, and it's kind of it sounded to me kind of like making soup. It's like they make a big pot of water, and then they put a little bit of sarin gas

in, and then they put a little bit of some other stuff in, and they stir it around to dilute it. And then they like No, no, no, let him cook! Let him cook! And then just fill balloons with it, and release them over Cleveland. Yeah.

Oh, God. Okay, this is my last story. This is the last vignette I had of Kentucky. FBI raid of Bullitt County home finds 40 human skulls, spinal cords used as decoration. Oh, I heard about this. Those are my friends?

Is that the line? Yeah, that's the line. Where the cops say, like, who's in there? Just me and my friends? Is that right? That was it. Is that right? Just me and some of my rowdy friends.

Yeah. I've heard this. Someone relayed this story to me. That was it. I like it. Yeah. A Bullitt County man was arrested Tuesday after FBI agents found dozens of skulls and other human remains in his Mount Washington home.

Because there but for the grace of God go I, right? Like if I had taken another path six months ago or 16 years ago or whatever, I could be that guy. You could be the skulls guy. I mean, can you imagine? Like if you had a bunch of human skulls in your house, of course you're going to start a conversation with them. And eventually that's going to lead to deeper conversations, relationships, conflicts, and things like that. Someone comes to your door, what are you going to say? I know.

I mean, seriously. That's a whole sitcom. Because he didn't kill any of those people, right? He collected them. He was a collector. He had been buying them online. Okay. Okay.

That's good to know. No, no. Yeah. He just, yeah. Yeah, because that's been a little weird i don't think i have killing in me but i do have talking to skulls for days on end in me i believe i've mentioned this on the program before but in my fifth grade classroom we had an actual human skeleton hanging from the sun and i never thought how weird that was until fairly

recently uh-huh but sandy earls brought a real human skeleton to show us. Yeah. Sometimes, you know, you can wind up having a very interesting afterlife. You can be someone's best friend. You can be a teaching, an opportunity for teaching in a classroom. You can be all kinds of things. God forbid you end up the, you you know the mother of the guy that sold you to the military to be blown apart yeah yeah that was uh there's like a human trafficking

network that had been started at harvard medical school actually which this guy probably bought some of those remains he was using the alias william burke and buying them online. It says law enforcement viewed Knott's public Facebook page, which included posts about human remains for sale as recently as June 2023. A Pennsylvania man, Jeremy Pauly, was selling the human remains, including organs and skin from his home. Pauly purchased the remains, which included hearts, brains, lungs, and two fetal specimens. So this is the part

you were talking about, Will. The FBI executed a search warrant Tuesday at the home in the 300 block of Love Avenue. Knott was the only person in the apartment, but when an FBI agent asked... A living person. The only living person. When an FBI agent asked if anyone else was there, he responded, only my dead friends.

That is so sweet. Like, when I heard that, I was just like, that is so sweet. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're not gonna, you know, if my innards could bring somebody a little companionship, I'm not gonna need them where I'm going. It's the age-old question. Is it a victimless crime? Because he could serve up to 10 years for this.

Does he deserve 10 years? I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't have to say no. That's a little extreme. And taxpayers do not deserve paying for him being in prison for 10 years for doing basically nothing. Just for making friends.

For making friends, yeah. doing basically just for making friends we're making friends yeah yeah i mean you know that's uh it's it's it's just an interesting story though i think that um like we said earlier you can have a long life afterlife people talk about is the word afterlife a contradictory term not necessarily not if you become someone's best friend in Mount Washington, Kentucky. Your femur becomes someone's, like, I would honestly like that for that, if someone could take my arm

and skeletal hand and rig it in a way that it becomes one of those old people grabber things. You know what I mean? Right, that's a good idea, yeah. You use it to grab a can. Yeah, in your afterlife,

you're just a novelty QVvc yeah you'd think our bones would be able to be put to good use right you would think so yeah there needs to be a qvc for bones yeah like they we could we could do that 24 hours a day we're selling bones on qvc it's like you're gonna want this femur this man was seven feet tall imagine how big his femur would be i can in a relic have you oh have you there's a there's a church here called saint martin of tours have you ever been there it's fun you all might want to it's just right downtown okay and there's two saint martin of tours t-o-r-U-R-S. Okay. And there are two skeletons in there that are relics of saints. Yeah. And they're just in these glass sarcophagi on either side of the pulpit.

It's pretty... I need to see that. Yeah. I need to see a skeletal saint. And you can just walk in and see it. And it's not like a fancy church or anything like that. And I think they're centuries old skeletons of saints. Maybe from Germany.

Possibly. Yeah. I think we could sell that on QVC for bones. Pretty easy. You know, it'd be great if full skeletons were on the market. Oh, you know,

we could buy a share of skeleton. Yeah. Before or after she dies. She can keep her skin and muscles, but we want the skeleton share. Yeah. It seems, I could also see just, you know, they talk about how controversial coffinless burying is, right? Yeah. But if we could just clean all the meat off and bury our relatives' bones in our yards, I think that would be kind of neat as well.

We knew a guy that was making a business out of it. What's he? Alan Skees had that. We'll cut that. Why would you cut that? Yeah, maybe we should promote that. Yeah. But he kind of positioned it as an eco-friendly alternative.

But I think part of the draw for him was the low overhead of skipping the whole coffin thing honestly i just i just had to go to a funeral two weeks ago and i was like looking i was sitting right there i was looking at the coffin this is like man this is so much yeah i don't want that it's a little ostentatious i will say and also a little claustrophobic it's called yeah it's totally claustrophobic. I want to be able to go out into the root system. Yeah, I don't want to be in a coffin. Yeah. Same.

Yeah. Because if you wake up, sometimes you see those stories. They're like, you know, woman screams heard from tomb, you know what I mean? Like seven hours after the funeral. It's like, I mean, if you've ever been upside down in a sleeping bag, that's hard for me. I think some people can just giggle. But upside down in a sleeping bag, I'm just

like, I'm in hell. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to end on. Because that's where we all might wind up if we're not careful. If we don't go to the festival of miracles. Heaven ain't a lot like Dixie, then.

Yeah, if the miracles doesn't take off. I mean, yeah, if the miracles doesn't take off. If it doesn't take off, yeah. Before we let you go, let's speak to this record a little bit that's coming out here. All right. Yes. Please do. The Keeping Secrets will destroy you.

Will destroy you. destroy i like the the i like that it's not that keeping secrets will uh sort of negatively impact maim you maim you yeah destroy yeah it's a very bold it's funny like i came up with the line and working on a song and then i then I went online and searched that line and, and it's more than one person has espoused this idea. Word for word. Yeah. Yeah.

But it is true. I mean, there is a truth to it. Uh, keeping secrets in a way it can alienate you from other people, which will be your undoing shrink your world shrink your world yeah right yeah it's a dangerous thing this is a heavy thing i saw that like hey god this is a little on the nose so these songs you uh well you've got what we've got uh

there was a song called bananas bananas Bananas and Crazy Blue Bells The two That John Sales is in He's in that video I saw the YouTube thumbnail Clip whatever you want to call that Well watch the video

Instead of researching more Sourceless stories about Kentucky So that's coming out in August instead of researching more sourceless stories about Kentucky. So that's coming out in August. August 11th, yeah. I've got a couple boxes of it right there if you'd like to take one home with you. Just don't play it on any podcasts or anything like that until August 11th.

We'll keep that secret. I will flex to tell everybody, yeah, I've heard that though. Are you playing any live shows for this you said you're gonna be in new mexico can people find this texas there's a texas tour just in colorado maybe it's your website i need a website i need a website do we what is a website do people have websites i think if you're a writer a musician if you're in any way like self-employed i like the link trees that people put up those are useful yeah yeah yeah i think so yeah yeah yeah i don't know the way i but nobody i

mean of course now it's been whatever 20 years and nobody ever updates their websites they're just all these janky like falling apart websites yeah yeah no matter who it is or when it is, it's just like, check out my recent concerts. It's like, 2014? Yeah, that is true. It's like, yeah. I just saw you last week, and you haven't posted that show yet. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Well, get the album when it comes out. Pre-order it. Pre-order it. Yeah, pre-order it. Pre-order it right now. Yeah. Dragcity.com, you can pre-order it. Yes.

That would be fantastic. Because I'm telling the Drag City folks, I'm like, we're going to get some more pre-orders. I'm going to get some more pre-orders. Yeah. All right. I mean, it's pretending. All I know how to do is pretend that this is a viable industry. Yeah.

Because it isn't but i am pretending and i will keep on pretending in hopes that maybe we break through some crazy firewall and all of a sudden life makes sense again that's how i feel about writing you know i keep holding on for that too same there was a yeah so someone a theater person I know posted something yesterday saying like, American theater is imploding. And my response was, what isn't imploding? What isn't imploding? It's all, it is really bad. It really depresses me.

Like things, everything is falling apart. And it does feel, I mean, it feels like the websites that they don't last, you know, the idea of people willfully giving their music and book collections, for example, over to some sort of digital format is basically saying, it does not matter. I have no value. This has no value to me. Yeah. You can have a book you can pick up and read that was published 150 years ago.

Yeah. I don't think that's going to, you know, like, I don't, you know, you're just gonna be like, yeah, I don't know. I think I had a digital copy of it somewhere that's probably on a drive that it's maybe in my garage yeah hypnosis now owns the routes to the mark twain estate it is it is a thing that has disturbed me very much um we there's something about a physical object that makes it real obviously that that seems like an obvious statement to make. Well, you have control over it, and it is a thing that is not going to change.

Its batteries aren't going to run out, and there's not going to be a server that decides that they're changing things, and you no longer have a compatible way of absorbing that material. It's just sitting there. It's for you. You can do anything with it you want to do. Yeah. Juxtapose with

I think about this type you know like how they've got these like streaming farms of like, you'll see an artist on Spotify for example and they've got. Well you won't. But I will. They'll have like seven million like listeners a month or something like that but their listeners are all in like you know

missoula montana whitesburg kentucky uh-huh so forth and then then yeah then the promoters get like the live nation people are like oh well why couldn't you sell out a 1500 seat theater and it's like with seven million listeners a month and right wherever they don't exist oh well it's because yeah yeah no i have some friends who are in a band and i saw them one day go from you know 243 followers on instagram to 10,243 followers on instagram the next day it's like okay wouldn't that cost like 70 bucks probably yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a weird world out there i mean i read an article the other day about steven malchmus was in a coffee shop heard a song come on over the radio and was like i know this song what is this song it was one of his songs um from bright in the corners that uhment had written,

but it was like a B-side, and they forgot all about it. But it apparently, in the last couple years, has become massively popular just because of the algorithm. Like on TikTok or something? What? Like on TikTok or something like that? Yeah, like TikTok,

but also I think just because of the Spotify algorithm. It's out songs that it thinks sounds like other songs. It's now like their most listened to song. It's so weird, though yeah i don't know algorithms it's like i've said to tom many times in the past it's like whether you believe in ghosts or not we've created them it's like they're all around is shaping reality now they they're you know they have instructions and commands put into them by us but they do kind of operate on their own terms

also i mean one thing i think about algorithms is is you know when i listen to music a lot of its value comes from how i learned about it you know yeah who shared it with me totally told me about it where you know where i found it and if it's all just one answer algorithm then the music doesn't have any value to me anymore. That is a great point. It's not connecting me to anything, but the algorithm that's created by Spotify and it's just deepening my relationship to Spotify,

which couldn't give two shits about me. You know, it's just like, well, where did you learn about this? My algorithm told me about it. That's a great point. The first time I actually ever heard of you,

I was probably like 20 years old, 21. And a friend had asked me, have you ever heard of Bonnie Prince Billy? And it's just, it's interesting to think about. I haven't talked to that person in a long time. Yeah. But it is something that connects us. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah.

And also connects you to us, grounds you in a certain place in time. And you're right. Like once you've disembodied that it's a kind of a it's a sad thing it's very sad um they just uploaded it and think you might like it yeah what is it you know right yeah yeah well you've heard about the new record from us yeah thanks remember where you are first folks when, when you heard Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You by Bonnie Prince-Boo. So, yeah, go pre-order that. I assume maybe tour dates are also on the Drag City website.

Yeah, they are. They do a good job. That is a good website. One of the last good. Well, they've got good artists, honestly. Yeah. They hold steady. They haven't updated the way the website looks in quite a while.

It functions. It's not broke. Don't fix it. Yeah. Well, go check that out um in terms of us you can go support us on patreon uh do you like patreon i mean it's you know it's it's weird because it's this way that we make money that we have no control over it's you know what i'm saying like There are programmers and people who control the website, and they can decide how much of a cut they get from what we make.

And that feels kind of fucked up because it's like DIY, but it's really not because they're making money from it. But also what's really – It seems like a great idea. I just resist another thing that needs to chain me to a computer. That's the thing. I just don't want it. In principle, it's a great idea.

The worst part about it is when it fucks up and our fans are like, why can't I access this? What's going on with payment? We have no say over any of that. It sucks. That said, go sign up today. That's also how I pay That said, go sign up today. Sign up today on Patreon. That's also how I pay my bills.

So go sign up. At a certain level, certain tier of payment, you get each of your mother's wedding rings sent out to you, right? You get our heirloom seed, tomato seeds, and our grandmother's wedding rings. Do you all send out heirloom tomato seeds? I don't. I may have some heirloom tomato seeds. They're always circulating around.

They're like Kentucky Civil War gold coins. I remember when we were cleaning up after the flood at the old postmaster's house that we were gutting our walls and ceilings for. Out of all this flood wreckage, there was one beautiful, just gorgeous tomato hanging on that that didn't have anything. It's like, hmm, that will give me cancer.

But that looks so good in this sea of just fucked up stuff right now. The flood, I had to reorient my. We should have took those seeds. Yeah, it's the thing. I had to reorient my relationship to the environment. So I think I may have eaten that tomato. I was probably like, fuck it. You're probably fine.

Probably fine. One tomato. I was probably like, fuck it. You're probably fine. Probably fine. One tomato. Yeah. Will, thank you so much for doing this, man. And thanks for having us in your home. Yeah, this is gorgeous. It's a beautiful neighborhood, a beautiful home. And we'll have to do it again sometime.

I gotta go see about picking my daughter up, I think. Yeah, I'm sorry to keep you. Yeah, it's almost... She was not... Dust that's gathered in our hearts Will be blown and dispersed Our interest in the darker arts No longer coming first

Practitioners of love and touch Legalized and praised. And fuck you very much to the greedy and the crazed. And our voices join the sounds of crazy bluebells. Crazy bluebells