Trillbilly Worker's Party - *UNLOCKED*"Screwy Stuey & The 6 Million $ Man Do Gatlinburg"(w/ Special Guest: Sturgill Simpson)

Episode Date: February 16, 2020

We got up with Sturgill Simpson to talk Jam Bands, Work, Bernie Sanders, Gatlinburg, The Music Business, Leaf Hound Melting Motherfuckers' Faces Off, Canonball Run, Caleb Landry Jones, Jim Jarmusch, The Monkees, Kanye West playing Pigeon Forge and Running for President, his upcoming tour, and much much more.

I'm fucked either way. I got anthrax, so... Don't get too caught. Literally. Thank the U.S. Navy for that one. Thank you, Tom Ridge. Yeah. Alright. Are we rolling? Yeah, I have drugs that I have to take for us to be able to do this show. We have a special guest.

Flomax for my prostate. We have Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top. Shit, I wish. Damn. I almost met him back in September. No shit. We played a show at the True Bird War in LA and I found out after the show,

thank God, that he was there or I would have choked. I wasn't feeling good so I left right after and everybody was like, thank God, that he was there. I would have choked. But I wasn't feeling good, so I left right after. And everybody was like, dude, Billy Gibbons was there. Like, God damn it. I mean, out in the bar. I was like, are you kidding me, man? I didn't get to talk to him. Let me ask you this, Sterling.

Since your rise, who are some of your more fancy friends? My what? Your fancy friends. You know the people that you're like i don't want to name drop but god damn it i'm friends with well let me get a hefty bag out real quick for all these names i'm gonna drop my fancy friends like people i'm i would say i'm actually friends with yeah uh danny mcbride hell yeah that's that's dream come true shit. Johnny Depp. That's cool.

I mean, Merle Haggard, that was like, I still don't know how that came to be, but I'm very grateful that he gave me time. I don't have a lot of friends, man. Walton Goggins' buddy, Joe Rogan's buddy. Walton Goggins is going to come on the show. You mean like famous people? What do you mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or just cool people?

Yeah, cool people. Famous. Cool people. Well, you guys are pretty cool. We're friends now. We are cool. We are at a very specific tier of fame. That does not exist. Tyler Childers is a buddy.

I would consider Tyler a real friend. Chris Stapleton has always been very kind to me. But in the music world, I tend to stay pretty isolated just for the sake of I don't want to end up sounding like somebody else. I've got an idea here because I think that you like to change your sound up a lot. I don't like to. I just get bored. Right, right.

So I'm going to give you some unsolicited advice as if you don't get enough of that already. Oh, please. Starting off. Please, I fired all the people that used to do that. Well, you can ask me to leave if you want to. We ain't going to get ten minutes into this. With the rise of Bernie Sanders, I feel like 1980s Burlington,

Vermont is sort of having a moment. Alright. I like LLB. Well, here's where I'm going with that. Wait, is that the Coke factory? I got it twisted. That is the Coke factory. LLB's in Maine.

Damn, man. For three minutes in, I already look stupid. Yes, welcome to my life. We don't even have to talk politics. I already look stupid. So here's what I'm thinking, okay? Okay. We've all been bagging on jam bands for

the last decade dmb ha ha ha you know whatever it's not for me either man hey listen though let me ask you this let's we might should give fish a different look in 2020 did you have to add trey anastasia to that list of fancy friends uh i would i'll look i'll hang out with anybody like even if i don't like your music if you're a'll look i'll hang out with anybody like even if i don't like your music if you're a cool person i'll hang out with you i'm just gonna be honest that i don't listen to your music um so and i don't dislike their music i'm just not familiar mostly because i think at a period in my life in my early 20s after i got out of the military and moved back to a town you know like i wasn't in college i never went to college but most of my friends

were in college and college kids get in these cliques. And there was one bar particularly that was just like, if you didn't listen to fish, you didn't hang out at that bar. So I never really knew if I belonged in that bar because I didn't know what was happening. And I was into other things. You know, I was always kind of weird like that. And I was never a deadhead.

But, you know, all the guys from the band I met are super cool. I just don't know enough to have an opinion because it's not something that I ever gravitated towards. Well, it's an investment. I couldn't name you a single Steely Dan song if it ain't on Double Q. That don't mean I wouldn't have a beer with them. I love Steely Dan. I'm saving it, actually. One day when I'm like 50 or 60, I'm just going to sit on the porch and go down a steely

Dan Rabbit hole. You won't regret it. Fish is like Tolstoy. You know, you've got to set aside years to get through. Which, the ironic thing of this is I played the country singer thing for a few years because I thought when you moved to Nashville and I wrote this country record and that's like I got up and sing these songs. But after after a while you just start feeling like a karaoke machine yeah but I always wanted to be a guitar player in a rock band like as a kid even when my grandfather

was shoving bluegrass down my throat like I was into Roy Buchanan and Danny Gatton and Roy Gallagher and Hendrix and all these guys so now it's like I finally found myself at 41 in the rock band I always wanted to be in and tired of singing King Turd, so we just jam now. And that's just how it is, man. Sometimes you just. So here's what I'm thinking. It's Ronan. Yes, sir.

But 28 minutes long. That might happen. Just you fucking just. By the time we get to Rupp Arena, that will probably happen. That's what I want. I'm going to time it out while I'm there. Well I guess today

everybody is not Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top. I'm so sorry. But Grammy Award winning Eastern Kentucky's finest. I got his number too. I'm sure he'd love

to talk to you. Hell yeah. Break them all up. stargell samson yeah stargell are you familiar with a writer by the name of jd vance you remember that name absolutely so um for the audience i knew this was gonna happen he's from uh well he's from jack Jackson Where I'm from That's right Sort of Sort of

Right So I mean yeah I think that it's It's fitting Like we started our show off With a sort of You know Grand roast of J.D. Vance

Like he says he's from Jackson I mean technically he is right I guess Is he I think what it was His grandparents were like Throughout 23 His Meemaw's from Jackson

Right Right Right Did you read his book people. His Meemaw's from Jackson. Right, right, right. Did you read his book? Tuesdays with Meemaw, I did. I read half of it. I literally read half of it. I read half of every book that I like. I don't want to trash anybody, man.

I really don't, but I will. A funny story, because I've gone on Hollywood gone all hollywood and shit right so i know all these casting directors and yeah uh they all know me and they know where i'm from so i got some phone calls when it's time to make this movie about if i would you know uh give an opinion on some things and that lasted about 10 minutes and i you know here's what i'll say this for i'll give this to jd like so many coastal elites over the decades that have come to eastern kentucky and found a way to point out all his problems much like them he offered no solutions he just found a way to get fucking paid for it right twice right twice so you gotta hand it to him

wherever he went to ivy league to Ivy League school, it wasn't for nothing. That's right. He got that Ron Howard bag. That's what we do, basically. We point out all the problems. Have you seen the credits for the movie? It's like Holler Girl number two. Oh, yeah. Holler Ant. Which is like a real archetype, though. Right.

You're a Holler Ant. Drug dealer. I am a Holler Ant. Yeah, there was one that was like dealing by the tree. Dealing by the tree. Let's just say at the end of the conversation, it was basically like, so we take it you're not going to submit any music for the soundtrack. But it is funny, though, that with what you've done and your success and all this stuff, and, you know, however we feel about it, it's a different thing. It is kind of strange that Jackson, Kentucky, Kentucky sort of sits at the center of culture.

Did you ever anticipate that? Wow, man. Bill Monroe had a bluegrass festival there. It's the only county in the entire nation that never had one single draftee in any of the World Wars. Everybody volunteered. Because I guess they figured we can stay here and get shot, or we can go over there and get shot. Right. Well, I mean, if it's like, okay, I'm I'm gonna die in a coal mine or if I'm gonna die

you know yeah for the country or whatever my my grandparents originally from Perry County uh and but man one people were both born like one mountain part in separate coal camps yeah and I guess they moved to Jackson probably for work people ended up working at a place called falcon cole which is down off the highway between jackson and hazard which eventually became diamond shamrock and mom's brother worked there and so they settled in jackson so at some point in the late 60s it's not to be fair i mean it the the town and the community that i knew when i was a child and lived there and would even after I moved away because of my dad's work, I'd go back every summer and stay with my mom and papaw if they didn't go to the lake in Waspar. But it was a different feeling then, I guess.

Yeah. Now, I mean, nothing's changed. The shell hasn't changed. But I guess when I go back, and maybe I've changed or just you know been away too long but i feel like and all my you know my uncle's still there my cousins are still there but the feeling i guess it's still home right you know it's all i could be i don't sleep very well probably sleep three hours a night but if i go home to my grandmother's house and sit on the couch i'm out cold in five minutes sleep like a baby you know get a good ac on get that grandma house smell you know it is but uh i don't know man and then i've been talking with

with the sheriff down there for a couple years now trying to come up with i don't you know this job comes with a lot of self-applied pressure. Maybe I'm probably hardest on myself than anybody. Yeah. And I don't, I'm just coming up short with like what I could actually do. Yeah. That would make any kind of difference or helping him. Not that anybody needs help.

You know what I mean? But like you, you build it, what do you build a park? You build a stage or a theater for the high school and then put your name on it and say, look what I did and hire your publicist to tell the world about it. I don't do that shit. I just don't know what would actually make a difference other than showing up and going to schools and playing music for kids and then telling them there's so many opportunities out there that you don't have to imagine. Just know they're real.

Yeah. You know, and you don't have to necessarily abandon your community or leave where you're from or be ashamed where you're from to accept and understand those opportunities. Yeah. But nobody's bringing any opportunities there. That's for damn sure.

Yeah. Right. I remember reading a few years ago, the FBI called breath of County a full-time job because there is so much corruption in the local government well that's another reason i've hesitated to do anything it's like what am i gonna write a check and hand it to somebody i might as well wipe my ass with it light on fire man you don't know it'll it'll come out on the other end as like a tank or surplus tank left over from there used to be a woman that ran jackson marie Mrs. Eversole, I think her name was back in the day.

Everybody had respect for her. She was still around. She held them all to the fire, the judges and everybody. She kept Jackson accountable. But Marie, what was her name? I think it was Eversole. Yeah. Anyway, that was a bygone era.

One of my favorite parts of Jackson is the oxbow. Why was that? how was that created did they you know what i'm talking about like that lake um that lake i guess it kind of runs like a river yeah yeah like pambo lake pambo yeah okay yeah that's that's off of uh of lake south states which is the second house i lived in in my life was in that neighborhood next to pambo okay and i put a hidden song about pan bowl i'm at a modern at the end of it it's a man-made lake okay and this time i guess you can fish it now we're my all my time on pan bowl was uh my uncle played music a very good musician kind of saw me gravitating and had an ability and and really encouraged it and but he had two

buddies wade and walter they were twin brothers and they lived down on pambo lake in this house that was basically like one big shotgun and they had set the entire front of the house up like a stage with lights and everything and they just kept the drums and everything set up in the pa and on the weekends they'd have parties and I was probably I mean six seven years old going and sitting in playing guitar with these grown-ass men and watching Danny Gatton and Roy Buchanan VHS tape stuff way beyond where my musical palate was even right possibly able to absorb at the time but it stuck with me and uh but their house was right on Pan Bowl and I'm sure there was things going on all around me I was unaware of,

like in terms of the partying. But, like, they just thought it was cool this kid was so into music. Yeah. And that's sort of really where my early education in music came from was Wade and Walter Begley on Pan Bowl Lake. Hell, yeah. That's awesome. Every time I drive by it, I'm like, this is what makes Jackson Jackson.

In a way. And you can drive all the way. I think if you go up that entrance where the lake is and drive around the backside of Lakeside and Mountain, you'll dump out on the other side of town, kind of up close to Walmart. Right. Yeah. My cousin Brad could probably show you every four-wheeler trail in Bertha County. And put us in contact with Brad.

Another funny. Shit, but she's a good dude, man. Another fun little Jackson piece of trivia or tidbit is like a few years ago

there was a big rock fall above the Walmart and it blew a hole like in the side of the Walmart. Oh, that's a damn shame.

Yeah, but it was really funny because the local news was interviewing this guy. Walmart blew a damn hole in Jackson. Yeah. That's but it was really funny because the local news was interviewing this guy. Walmart blew a damn hole in Jackson. Yeah. That's true.

It was funny. They were interviewing this guy afterwards on the local news, and he was like, well, I guess the local Walmart got a drive-thru at least. Just totally like deadpan. That's what you have to do to keep from crying, though. You know what I mean? It's just our thing. I'm sorry. We were talking shit about J.D. V keep from crying, though. You know what I mean? It's just our thigh. I'm sorry.

We were talking shit about J.D. Vance. No, I don't know. I didn't mean to take away from you. No, I don't have anything else to say about it other than you're both from the same place. Well, I mean, they didn't even film the movie there, right? I don't think that. Well, they have filmed two movies in Jackson. I don't know if you're aware of this.

The first being next of ken featuring the one and only patrick swayze that's right and then you may remember the scene uh where he gets off the train there used to be an old train depot in jackson it was right down in stray branch where my great-grandmother lived and my cousin brad and i would go play at that train station all the time it wasn't safe but they filmed that scene there and immediately after the shooting wrapped they tore the train station down but the old man that he sees when he gets off the train standing there had this long beard you guys have no idea what i'm talking about i can tell no i'll next go back and watch next to kenny liam neeson's finest outing i just want to say that but there was an old man on the train station had this beard well when they were shooting

doing location scouting they went to hardy's and they saw this old man at the train station who had this beard. Well, when they were shooting and doing location scouting, they went to Hardee's and they saw this old man in there. And I can't remember his name, but he won the fucking lottery. And they called him the six million dollar man around Jackson. He never changed anything about the way he lived. I think he put his kids through school. I hope I'm getting this right. But he still lived way back in this holler.

He was a hermit. Yeah. He had this big, long Billy Gibbons beard, you know? So they saw him and they're like, oh, he's perfect. So they put him in the movie. I think he pissed all the money away somehow, or somebody did for him. But, and then the other movie they filmed

was Fire Down Below, Steven Seagal. Steven Seagal is filmed partly in widespread time. So there's probably a bunch of like illegitimate Seagal. Steven Seagal. It's filmed partly in Weisberg, too. So there's probably a bunch of, like, illegitimate Seagal kids running around Jackson with little ponytails and shit.

My friend Amanda Black being assholes makes a little cameo in that. Well, till this very day, there's a frame next to Ken Poster in the Hazard Applebee's.

Oh, man. My cousin Brad almost ran him over on Main Street at the intersection. He walked out in front of his truck and he's like, holy shit, that's Steven Seagal. That's awesome. Yeah, I don't know why Ron didn't film it there.

Yeah. But it has always been a centerpiece for Appalachian culture. I know, yeah, like I said, Bill Monroe used to do a festival there until somewhere in the mid or late seventies. I think he ran off with all the money one day, so they just didn't do it again. Yeah, man.

Yeah. So you've been getting into acting a little bit. I didn't, I didn't, I got sucked into it. I enjoy it. I tell you why I did it. When the opportunity, I got, I got a into it. I enjoy it. I'll tell you why I did it. I got a weird call.

We're out in L.A. playing at the Greek Theater. This was probably three years ago. And my agent said, hey, do you want to go meet with a lady and read for a part on a TV show? And that's all they said. And I was like, well, that's weird. Okay, that's all I can think about. Sure, I'll go and do it. And I went and met this really nice lady, Vicki,

and they didn't tell me even what it was. It was so secretive and weird and cryptic that I walked out of there just kind of like, what the fuck just happened? And we got home a week later from the tour, and my agent called and he's like, hey, they need you to fly back to L.A. and read with this woman in Mahershala Ali again for True Detective. And I was like, okay. And it's only like the most anticipated third season

of television in history somehow they knew my dad was a state trooper and yada yada and art is art expression is expression so i flew back fuck it why not and and went and read what this dude was like oscars and shit and it went in the whole like producers and the writers and the director everybody's in the room that wasn't uncomfortable at all and uh and i didn't get the part thank god probably because that's the most anticipated season television i've never done it before and but that led to another i guess the same production company that worked on that show did this other thing and they they knew or saw the tapes and asked me if i want to do this other thing in pittsburgh and i was like yeah why not i'll try that was so burnt out on the road at

this time yeah it was 2017 first of all anybody that came to my show in 2017 i'm sorry i did not want to be out there i was missing my wife and my kids terribly i've been asking for time off for two years had literally had to fire everybody to get it. And I just was burnt out, like, and exhausted in a way that I'd never really. I was not understanding what I was processing at the time. Like, I'm one of those people, if you just point me in a direction, I'll just keep going until I die. And I should have known when to say when.

And then I took a second job in between all that touring and making that TV show. And that led to an audition for this movie Queen and Slim, which I went out to LA and auditioned for the director, Melina, who's brilliant.

Yeah. Absolute visionary. And I just being in the room with her, I could tell I have to work with this human being. Just sheer creative energy. I just wanted to like learn from her. And, uh, and that was a lot of, a lot of fun and very educational experience. Yeah. Is that the one where you play a police officer? Yeah. Well, it's kind of underspoken, but yeah, it's there. Um, and it was, and I got to work with daniel kalia who's obviously brilliant

yeah and uh and lena waithe and some other people we shot that thing in cleveland right in the middle of polar vortex that whole 12 minute scene took like a week and it's like negative 27 degrees outside it was very like i'll never uh sell short what those people do again as long as I live. You know what I mean? Like, that is work. It's absolutely work. And I would go home at the end of every day and just fall face down on the bed with my clothes on and pass out. Yeah.

I was in the theater in Lexington watching that, and I said, I think that's Sturgill Sampson. Yeah. And this lady that was sitting beside me was packed down. This lady was sitting beside me, and she was like, you know, you're pulling him out of the car and all this stuff and opening the trunk with the shoes and the gun everything she's like you know this is what i gotta you know tell my son about you know and all this kind of stuff and then five seconds later she said god they cast that so good i hate that motherfucker i know that's how you've done well so you did good well I mean you know

like I said dad was a state trooper he was not that cop but he certainly worked with some of those guys I was around him so I knew what it looked like I knew

you know I got a lot of friends that are that's the most whitest thing you can say but I got a lot of black friends I got a lot of gay friends I know what their life has been

the guy who my tour manager I've literally been pulled over in a car with him three or four times in my life. And when I was driving, you don't get a ticket. And when he's driving, we got a ticket. You know what I mean? Even when I tell the guy who my father was after they've written the ticket, and then they say, oh, tell him to put a good word in front of him.

I'm like, no, motherfucker, I will not do that. Right. So, yeah yeah there's but to me that a big part of the conversation in that scene was that we wanted everything to be below surface like there was no it wasn't blatantly racist it was just more of like power dynamics you weren't cartoonish i wasn't oh yeah you don't want to make it a cliche yeah right but this guy could have been having a bad day. He's a human being.

But at the same time, once he got disrespected and reminded, like, his superpowers aren't real, then the switch flips. Right. So. Just how the way it often goes. It's very, very rarely is it cartoonish and, you know, characterized. Well, I watched about 200 hours of YouTube traffic stops, and sometimes that shit gets cartoonish yeah yeah you're right you're like how did these guys get this job you're right yeah you know yeah yeah um well i've still not seen the movie i haven't either well i die in like the first 12 minutes

yeah it is a beautiful film though though. I don't know. I'd swim an ocean to work with Melina again, though. Yeah. Oh, yeah, what a dream. She is an absolute... Well, it's a bummer that you lost out to Stephen Dorff, though, for True Detective. It's a bummer. I'm guessing that's the...

Everybody, yeah. Is that the role you were auditioning for? If nothing else, I could have spared us all from that wig. Damn. auditioning if nothing else i could have spared us all from that wig damn well that's fine i was uh so when i had reached out to you about doing that thing that we're working on ashley atkinson had given me her uh cbs all access credentials to see another ashley like you've seen black klansman yeah yeah i know her like i literally know her she's an amazing beautiful human being. But I watched that movie in Pittsburgh with her sitting three feet away, and I'm like, I fucking hate you.

Like, who, how can this be the same person? You know what I mean? She's so good in that. Damn. That's a shout-out to Ashley. Ashley's the shit. It's like, I know that's you, but I fucking hate you. Yeah.

I want to talk about, so, you know, you talk about, like, pulling from real world experiences and stuff like that. I want to talk about working on the railroad. Okay. I would love to talk about working on the railroad. Nobody ever asked me about that. No, I want to talk about it because of, like, the specific place you were working. Right. What is it?

You said it was, like, a mid, it's like a a juncture between like mid all midwestern and i worked at a union pacific intermodal switching yard in salt lake city which is the main cross artery for the entire western region of the united states so any train coming from seattle or california going anywhere else east of there has to come through our yard so it was just this major busy intersection right and we'd get trains coming in from both directions and we'd tear them apart rip out cars and manifest throw them in differently holding tracks rip cars we were holding to go on those trains and cargo and rebuild them and throw the power on and get them crude and send them down the line yeah so i

was i started as a switchman like actually tearing the trains apart sloughing them down to the tracks then i was an engineer for a while and then i was a yard master which is like you're rolling around in this big beefed up four-wheel drive truck with 18 radio antennas that's also just a killer talking to everybody coming in and out of the yard is kind of playing chess with the train yard right and being an artist i learned in the navy i have a natural ability for gathering assimilating information and then like literally playing chess yeah or it comes in real handy in the Navy I have a natural ability for gathering, assimilating information and then like literally playing chess. Yeah. Or it comes in real handy in a studio when you're producing or,

or seeing things 10 steps ahead. I can't, it took me three years to pass algebra one, but like I can, I can laterally think like nobody, you know? Um, so the,

the, and the Western region director's office happened to be on that yard and he he called me screwy stewie because he knew he knew i was a little different in touch but he's like just let that bird fly and you know do not disturb the exotic bird and everything will be just fine and then so from that i fucked around into an assistant management position at night and about three months after I took that the guy running the yard I guess didn't want to work or went somewhere else uh or when he moved up so I took the operations manager position this is all like a year and a

half yeah so I fucked up real good and proper and did a good job and I was out there kind of like it's the first time I'd really stepped away from music and all the sorrow and disappointment that that had brought me up until that point yeah and i stepped away from drinking and and drugs and all this shit and really just decided to throw myself into that job and uh it was a great job yeah but the management position is where i fucked up because now i'm not on the yard anymore which was sort of good because it was in the desert Utah sun 12 hours a day. I literally aged 10 years and three years out there. And, um, but now you're on these conference calls and now you're, you got to go to the seminars and the khaki pants and all that shit, man.

And I just hit vapor lock and, uh, was, got real depressed. And so the guitar came out of the closet, started writing and playing. And my wife was just like, you're a fucking idiot because that's what you should be doing. Right. So we got to quit the job, and we moved to Nashville. Yeah. So that's the last job you had before? Well, the last job technically that I had was working stocking shelves at a grocery store.

I see. Once we moved to Nashville. That was a tough blow going from like 62 a year yeah to less than minimum wage and like being a songwriter at 35 you've never questioned your life decisions until you're 35 years old sleeping on the floor in a fucking hotel room with a bunch of 23 year olds barely making enough money to put gas in the car to get to the next gig right you got a wife at home with a baby on the way you're thinking am i insane right or am i just a real thirsty bitch or like what what is it you know yeah um and luckily things worked out and

i got really lucky nobody else wrote a song about turtles and drugs one year well the reason i ask and trust me i'm not a terrorist or anything um but it is like see now everybody's you talk about pressure points in america's infrastructure yeah grid and everything that is one of them if you shut that down oh the whole economy collapses right no dude like if a train showed up two minutes late you know uh that's the end of the world because now we have not only to get it done we have to get that two minutes back and get it out early. Right. And if it's 45 seconds early, literally four motherfuckers I will never meet in my life are calling my office screaming.

I mean, screaming, cussing, screaming. It was like the military all over again. Right. It was a very tyrannical environment because there's so much accountability. Right can't stop it can't not run you know uh we go to war oil goes up trucking gets more expensive train freight jumps through the roof everybody's going going going train now you know that's right they ship cars they ship you want every one of those cars it could be flat screen tvs it could be 80,000 spark plugs you know you don't know what's in those things unless you open up and look at the manifest that's right sometimes we'd uh

we'd have space rocket boosters there was a there was a a nasa no there was an actual aeronautics like air force something other down the road yeah there's air force base but then they had the place where they actually made the boosters that they use at Kennedy Space Center to lift those things up and send them up there. So like giant bombs. That's crazy.

Like boosters full of rocket fuel. They would ship them by train. Jesus. Department of Defense, Homeland Security, they'd come in and they'd brief us all and they'd have to like, we'd store them for days on end

down in the swivel holding track and then ship them out. So like, it was big boy pants stuff, man. Yeah. Cle cleaning up train wrecks is big boy pants yeah um and then watching a train wreck happen right in front of you is definitely a very sobering experience yeah um i've watched them but only figuratively it's terrifying you know it's terrifying it happens so fast you're completely powerless until everything stops moving from its own inertia. But it's, I mean, literally within a matter of seconds, it goes from being on the track to 15 cars on the ground, like displacing enough earth to build an Olympic swimming pool.

That's insane. And you're just like, oh shit, I was sitting there in my truck 15 minutes ago. Right. Where that stuff's all piled up now, you know. They did it in a way so that they didn't have to use their own guys. Yeah. Because they're not efficient. I see.

A coal train wrecked down from my house when I was growing up. Just the sound alone was fucked. The sound is awful. It was terrifying. We didn't know what happened. Gnarled, twisting steel. Yeah. Right.

You know, and you think like one locomotive is a diesel turbine locomotive is about 30 000 horsepower so if you got four of those hooked up together pulling the train man like i could rip this hotel right off its foundation the power is just inconceivable right right um so you'd be sitting in the locomotive if you're the engineer and you're pushing back and say a car you know however 25 30 cars back you know you're talking some of these some of these things are a mile and a half long right and if it goes in the dirt you have no idea because you're you're sitting on 140 000 horsepower just pushing backwards right until somebody gets on a radio and says hey dumbass

well i think that's uh it sounds like that's kind of a recurring theme though and a lot of your You lost half your train. That's crazy. Well, I think that's a, it sounds like that's kind of a recurring theme though in a lot of your stuff. Like, um, not twisted metal, but also kind of that. But like, uh, but you know, like systems of hierarchy and tyranny and like. Hegemonic structures. Yes. There you go. That's what I've found that you can't escape it.

Right. Um, all I can do is try to change the world I operate in, which is the music business. And I've learned that nobody really gives a shit. You're not going to change anything. You can bitch all you want. Then you just look like a bitter asshole. But really, by trying to bring transparency towards essentially a paper-thin operation, definitely a hegemonic structure, because there's gatekeepers.

And they decide who gets the platform. structure because there's gatekeepers and they decide who gets the platform. And if you're not servicing their, their business model or directly benefiting them, you're not going to get the platform. You're always going to be on the outer, the outer brink. So I just saw that early on and discovered there was a career there too. And just going out and doing whatever you want.

Yeah. Um, is that a conscious decision? I mean, what you've done with your career i mean it had to be at one point realizing well that ain't gonna happen if you're not if you're not on the inside you never will be right and you know they prop up the insiders and it's all there's a lot of marketing there's a lot of manufactured horse shit yeah you know you read

about things blowing up it's because somebody's paying a lot of money for those things to blow up. Whereas opposed to some like My Career or Jason Isbell or Tyler, those are all grassroots. That's the fans making that happen. Yeah. Like Bernie. Exactly like Bernie.

Would you call yourself the Bernie of... The Bernie Sanders of rock and roll. I'll be honest, man. I don't know enough about Bernie or that whole world in general to call myself. I've tried to remain beautifully above hell the last three weeks. We're ambassadors for Bernie. We'll tell you all about him. Well, here's the thing.

You got me for like, what, an hour, two hours? I'm all ears. My dad, the last half of his career he was a bodyguard for governors it was like handle executive security for three or four governors so in kentucky in kentucky that was my first introduction to politics and what i learned is they're all crooks totally and so like and nothing ever really changes it's all like this big distraction mechanism because the people that are really pulling the strings, we don't even know their names.

Right. You know, and I feel like they finally found the perfect distraction mechanism. Like this guy is more than happy to distract, but like, I don't see him being any more dangerous than anybody that came before or after. But now on the burn, you know, I've i've i travel europe extensively i've seen the benefits i don't consider myself a socialist i'm probably an anarchist yeah um i've seen that i have seen and directly benefited and experienced the benefits of socialist health care my wife and i were in belgium on vacation once and our our baby came down roseala like two in the morning we're

staying at this airbnb i called the lady we're renting from just to see if she had a thermometer in the house you know because like my nine-month-old son was limping my arms like scared the shit out of me you know and this woman maybe 12 minutes later was downstairs with her car and took us to a hospital we walked in the hospital and within four minutes, we're in a room, not with a nurse, not with somebody filling out our insurance paperwork with a doctor. Yeah. In four minutes, we're looking at a doctor at two o'clock in the morning. Right here.

It would take you hours. Treated the kid. Everything was fine. Took care of it. Yada, yada, yada. Alleviated our stress and anxiety. I think it was $14. Yeah.

Um, so I was like, Oh like oh maybe maybe there's something to this whole not benefiting off the suffering of your country's citizens you know what i mean exactly i know but my question y'all is if i'm gonna vote for burn why wouldn't i just pack my family up move to spain and and get the benefits of a real socialist economy in a country with an uprising fascist movement you know what what I mean? Or as opposed to like wait around for this guy to die in office before he actually makes any difference. And then we were stuck with

Warren anyway. Right. Or whoever gets the sycophantic coattail VP nod at that point. I don't know. Just tell me what's the fucking point in a broken system to think any of this shit's going to make a difference my my guess my answer would be sort of actually what you said earlier about the music industry it's like you change what you can affect and i feel

like exiting the system it's sort of like oh brother i tried to to the extent of probably destroying my career i tried to make a difference to change things. I didn't do shit. All I gave them was a perfect marketing plan to sell their own fucking people. You know what I mean? Right. Anybody who's followed our show will be listening to this

and noting the irony of me trying to convince... Start to censor the film. Yeah, because I personally have felt this many times before. It's like the system is so fundamentally broken that... I think we need to start over.

I do, too too the whole idea of having this one dude that resides in office and yeah well it's all an illusion and as far as first of all but like you know the senate doesn't represent us no mitch mcconnell certainly does not represent the people of america he represents his fucking rich friends right his buddies and lovelies never done shit for eastern kentucky and never will except bring what a fucking aluminum plant ran by the most human rights violating country on the planet right they're gonna invent like new forms of lung cancer to give to hillbillies i guess is the whole uh that's their favorite destroyed the water in the soil let's fuck

the air up too and give everybody alzheimer's i don't i don't just don't at this point man it like numbs my head yeah right well i think that like um it's like you were saying it's funny like all the things that you were just saying i think apply to all this now like you can only change what you can affect like you have to change the world you have to enter you have to find a place to enter into the stream of history and for me personally i guess that's bernie now i don't i'm under no illusions that it will change't i'm under no illusions that it will change everything i'm under no illusions that it'll turn everything around or fix a fundamentally broken system i do like his style though i do like his style i love there's no gray area with bernie sanders you know exactly what he's feeling and thinking and that to me is

refreshing and a politician you knew it in 1979 well and 1962. It's consistent. Well, and I think that also the thing is, the important thing for me is that his campaign is harnessing a large movement, a sort of large mass of energy that I've not seen sort of harnessed

in politics in a while. So did Obama. Well, so did Obama. That's exactly right. That was a huge letdown. It was a huge letdown. I mean, it gave me $8,000 for my wife to buy our first house. That was awesome house that was awesome but uh you know he spent four years cleaning up

rumsfeld's mess but i didn't really see all the hope come to fruition that we all were promised my response to that and this is what i think i think that like and look what it led to it led to trump in many ways because he didn't he didn't prosecute the banks he didn't end the wars didn't do any of that so i think that's why we've got trump but i think that like i think that so much has happened in the last 12 years since obama that it's for me personally i don't know if we could be able to replicate obama again again i could be making a huge error and putting my faith in this guy he could be lying to all of us he could get in there and be like all right well we're gonna do everything like obama i don't think he's lying i just think he's a very idealistic old man right

i don't you know no matter who gets in there they they soon learn like they have no power right and everybody has to kiss the ring have you ever met any other idealistic old man i feel like they usually go in the opposite direction the older you get the i'm a pretty idealistic old no i'm a cynic i'm totally cynic um idealistic old i don't know many old men with wisdom that are idealistic exactly so there's something to it well i guess would idealistic so when you say they have to kiss the ring whose ring would it be i guess the bank the corporation There's something to it. Well, I guess with idealistic... So when you say they have to kiss the ring, whose ring would it be? I guess the banks.

The corporations. The billionaires. The corporations. Petroleum. The military. Big pharma. The string pullers. Right, right.

The ones that directly benefit from maintaining the hegemonic structure known as the United States of America. Right, right, right. Well, do you think, though, that it's possible that people... I mean, we're an empire at this point. Oh, yeah. Not for sure. We're empirical.

Let's say, for example, though, the people who are working at the railroad that you were working at. Also an empire. But let's say they became... A monopoly, even. Let's say they became politicized to the point to where they were like well we want to change this too let's shut the fucking railroad down let's shut down commerce let's grind the the cyst like the gears of the system to a halt because you know in the conventional thinking then like once you've ground the system to a halt then the people in power actually have to

listen to what you're saying and in fact it can actually go no quickly what they'll do is they'll kick you off your own yard and hire scabs to come in and run their fucking train they will do that because somebody's always going to need that money but if that's the case then why do anything you know what i mean like then there would be no point doing anything we're going to need a few more hours if you want to have that conversation i did part two i do not have that answer i i'm struggling with it a bit myself yeah yeah yeah well what i think what i think is interesting particularly and it kind of mirrors the railroad thing too is like people where we came from all of our forebears what were they

were doing they were sitting in the cold true i was that was a go ahead that was power in this country that was building places like chic and New York and all these places. Then they get left in the dust. But at one point, what did they have? They had labor power because they would go on strike and we would take China's economy. We had unreasonable power. That doesn't exist anymore. And there were real repercussions to that in eastern Kentucky in the 70s when the unions was straight. And they bring scabs in.

The union guys whose jobs gets taken were hiding out in the tree line with shotguns blowing the scabs fucking guts out yeah the bulldozer that they were driving yesterday that gets people to pay attention against people breath of county for sure everybody talks about bloody harley nobody talks about bloody breath no that's true that's true it's just i think that's one way to get a raise yeah yeah i just think that um yeah i don't know my point i guess it's just that like you know this country owes like people like where we're from a great deal and oftentimes treats us like oh well what have you done for me like all the right way yeah yeah yeah well you know yeah they owe the people they owe the people this country all over this country a great deal

and now we're serving them for you're lucky you know i i don't know man i've worked every odd job known to man literally in my life i've done some shit work that i can't even believe i did just out of some of it was just for the sake of the experience. I worked on a shrimp boat once because I wanted to. Watch Forrest Gump. Well, I got out of the Navy. I was kind of crazy and wanted to be on the water. Isn't that one of the most dangerous jobs? It can be.

It's shit work. You get like staph infections. If you ever see a living shrimp, you'll never eat shrimp again as long as you live um did they get staph infections you can you have to wear gloves if you handle like get your hands yeah there's a lot of brine it's just they're disgusting but like yeah you know people out there have to go wake up and do shit most people don't want to imagine i'm very fortunate i don't have to do that anymore. Yeah. I got real lucky, you know, uh, I can't even comprehend it some days how, how much my life changed in one check. Yeah. And my wife's life, my mother's life, you know, and, and it's, you struggle with it. Cause like,

you don't want to be the Nissan commercial song guy. And I haven't been, but those are hard decisions when they offer you more money than my grandfather ever made in his life for 45 seconds of some jingle you know what I mean yeah but you have to you got to wake up and look at yourself how do you have that discipline to do that because how much do you need man like I'm you know i don't need that that's the uh that's the campaign line for bernie how much do you really need how much do you really need that's why i was bringing this back and then it goes back to my world you know in the mainstream country world there's there's guys that for all intents and purposes have the talent and ability

to make some of the most beautiful traditional country music you've ever heard and they but they keep pumping out formulaic horse shit to sustain a lifestyle or i don't know maybe it's to pay the people that they're now responsible for when they're jokers i don't know but like how much do you need yeah yeah yeah you know how much do you need? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, how much do you need to where when 50 people get shot to death at a music festival and your, your stream pullers tell you you're not allowed to answer questions about gun control. Yeah.

That everybody's too afraid to say shit. Yeah. You got $45 million fucking dollars in the bed. What are you scared of, man? Right. Truly. Yeah.

But we talk a lot about how, what what a bernie um country could look like and you know people with 45 million dollars in the bank it's hard to even imagine what that is they have a lot more to lose than we do oh don't ever give me 45 million dollars i'll hire somebody to breathe for me i swear to God. Man. That's a lot to lose. You lose your mind quick. Yeah. That's part of it, too.

It is a very, it's a toxic industry. And it does toxic things to you. And if you let it, you start buying into all that manufactured horse shit yourself. And that's where it gets slippery. Now it's not just about creation, which is the true gift of the job. The opportunity in itself is like, you're getting to make things that maybe cheer people up that have to go to work and do shitty jobs every day or,

you know, um, so I, if you're asking me how you maintain the discipline, I just always remind myself it's not as much as they all want you to believe it's about you yeah it's not about you and there's been times where I've even forgotten that you have to have a healthy ego to even want to do this you know you have to be a little fucking crazy to want to do this job and it's a slippery slope, man. You can get caught up, you know,

and, like, that's why I'm not on social media because I see so many people that are contemporaries or what have you. They beat this mentality into, like, you have to constantly tread water or you're going to drown. Yeah. And you're only as good as your last record, and you've got to stay visible and relevant.

So you see people out there, like, pandering all over fucking social media for, media for running for mayor of enlightenment and shit. Or beating their chest, telling everybody how feminist they are. It's just like you've got a 50s media narrative that we're all supposed to be the definitive horse shit of our generation. You know what I mean? And at a certain point, probably about three years ago i just realized it's all a fucking racket and they're and even the good people and a lot of them are good people man they but they're they're parasites yeah and the amount of mental gymnastics that they

have to do to sleep at night will make you exhausted and then you just sort of like i just decided i'm not gonna do this part of it anymore and if i sell 200 000 less records oh well like my family's okay yeah yeah you know um if i want to make a rock and roll record completely isolate my entire fan base because that's what me and my band wanted to do when i went to studio i love that fucking shit so much. But, you know, we're music geeks, man. It wasn't like I did have to process a lot of anger and clarity. Yeah. But, like, I also grew up on rock and roll,

and I'm playing in a band with a lot of great rock and roll musicians. So, like, let's make a rock and roll record. And then when we're done with that, I'll go to Japan and get all these brilliant motherfuckers to make some crazy porno cartoon. That's just so good. You know, because why not, man? We're going to die, right? Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Let me ask you a question. I don't know if this, and this could be my own projection onto your work, but, you know, you've got that line on the new record that's like, you know, truth's been shrouded. I think it's time to switch up the sound. Does that come out of, because I've always been curious if I ever had noise. You don't want to peek behind the curtain, man. Just a little bit. I said everything on that record I don't want to sit and talk about in interviews

because it'll just get twisted out of context or like Rolling Stone will, you know, Sturgill farted today or whatever. You think they'll listen to this, Rolling Stone? I don't know who listens to what or anything anymore. Maniacs listen to this. We've made this record. We've made this movie.

I believe in it. I love it. I didn't promote it. I didn't do 8,000 interviews. I didn't play a single late night TV show because that's all the game as far as I'm't do 8,000 interviews. I didn't play a single late night TV show because that's all the game. Right. As far as I'm concerned. You have no control.

Yeah. No control. If I go on TV, like, yeah, everybody's going to see it, but I don't get to say what the mix sounds like. So I'm compromising my art. Yeah. Not even thinking about that. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Did you have to do that a lot for Metamodern? Oh, I did it all. Yeah. I did so much shit that I didn't even know what i was doing or why anymore and a certain point it's you're not you're not it's not promoting the art you're you're selling magazines man you're you're now you're because now you're now you're a product and now you're now you sell advertising space and every time you fart they write about it because people click on it you know i mean i just don't i didn't want to be that anymore yeah that was

that was sort of the base side to that question not to even get into to the lyrics but you know what I mean I just don't I didn't want to be that anymore yeah that was that was sort of the b-side to that question not to even get into to the lyrics but you know I think that like the sort of milieu that like writers and whoever else puts you know you and Jason Isbell and now Tyler and Chris Stapleton and like the saving country music guys I was curious if that had something to do that lyric had something to do with you not wanting to carry that mantle necessarily anymore. It's not about not wanting to. It's just like, why should anybody have to? We're just making records, man. We don't have any fucking answers.

We're not the definitive this or that. You know, there's going to be a new flavor next month because the business, they exist off new flavors and they know thirsty bitches are coming in every day. They'll bend over backwards and do whatever they say to have that opportunity um but to me it's just about clarity seeing things clearly is what that record is about to me and regaining control of myself as a person in my own identity instead of uh being marketed as this idea of something because that's how you end up looking at rooms full of people you don't really relate to. You know what I mean? And I know what that feels like, too.

Or it did for a while. And it just makes you wonder what you did wrong. Yeah. You start to wonder if there's something innate in you that resulted in this. Yeah. Because I deal with this. And like yeah, because I deal with this. And like I said, you know,

it's an industry and it provides jobs and 99% of the people are good people. Yeah. They're just doing a job. And the job is the job. But at the end of the day,

ultimately, they don't believe in anything. Right. Except getting paid. Getting paid, right. Because that's what we're all here for, right?

That's right. Trying to figure that part out. Well, I mean, it makes me wonder, though, like when you, okay, let's rewind time, go back to the railroad yards or even stocking groceries. Well, see, where I screwed up is thinking, well, I moved to Nashville, I thought i want to be a songwriter okay that's when i quit the job i was like all right well i like writing songs i've always sit on the couch and play guitar and wrote songs i want to write songs and see if i can get paid for that and i moved to nashville out of naivety thinking that that was something i could realistically stomach because i didn't know what writing songs in nashville now really meant until i got here as a 35 year old man and looked around

and you see the writing on the wall and you, you, you see what that means now. I'd rather go die in a train wreck than do that. Sitting in a cubicle with eight other people, like writing literal horse shit dribble, right? Feeding the formula. And, uh, I was like, well, all right, I don't want to do that. I've got all these songs. I guess I'll try to record them and make a record and, you know, yada, yada, yada. So you kick around the can. My former manager, he was a good dude. He was the only one that really wrote me back. And that, you know, he actually was like one of the good ones.

We just reached a point where I was creating my own opportunities. I didn't really need a manager anymore. And and you realize when nashville is not going to be any help so we just got busy playing shows and touring and then like i said every other town in the united states that would be my advice not to answer we're talking about the apple shop my advice to being by coming to nashville don't come nashville just get a van and start playing everywhere else right because you're not going to get paid to Nashville is don't come to Nashville. Just get a van and start playing everywhere else. Right. Cause you're not going to get paid to play here.

And everybody, everybody, there's only like 30 players. They're all going to show up and decide whether your star is bright and shiny enough for them. And if they decide no, then you're just going to end up spinning your wheels or five years for nothing when you should have been playing everywhere else.

Yeah. And that's it in a nutshell. Yeah. You need a lawyer and you need a good booking agent. You can trust. You don't really need anything else anymore. Yeah. You need a lawyer and you need a good booking agent you can trust. You don't really need anything else anymore. Right. We played our second show here.

The same people showed up and they're like, are y'all hard up for money? Stuff like this. A good publicist helps. And I had a really good one from Metamodern. And the visibility's there. Like for High Top Mountain, my first record, I did not really good one from Metamodern, and the visibility's there. Like, for High Top Mountain, my first record, I did not really have any money, because I recorded it. I took a loan out and just went out and played shows, but I didn't have any PR. And what I learned is if you don't have a publicist, nobody's going to write about it, because you're feeding the racket.

Right. The publicist handed it to the outlets. They decide this is something we're going to blow up and generate content for, and y yada yada well i'm out of modern that's what happened so people knew i wrote a song about turtles and drugs right um and then you play late night tv but like these are all gatekeepers again you know you gotta you gotta you gotta feed the monkey or you don't eat but in a certain after a certain while i realized like well I'm a monkey, so I'll eat the bananas. Yeah. Which are very nutritional, but can give you heartburn.

Right. Speaking of monkeys, I watched Head for the first time after I heard you. You watched Head? Yeah. I was actually talking to Ashley about it. She's like, you got to see that fucking shit, dude. That shit is trippy, man. It's so fucking good. It's so fucking good.

It's so fucking good. People sell the monkeys short. I love the monkeys. The band we're talking about now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're kind of like Kiss in a way where they like, you know, like you start out as a fake band and then you become a real band. Yeah. And then the post sort of takes hold.

You become a real thing. Oh, man. What was your, you had a a question something about the blogs and the and the if that's what no man really it's just i learned i i'm i have to turn off everybody else's expectations yeah to do my job i can't i can't serve anyone other than my own muse um you said saving country music that guy he well not specifically that blog but i'm just saying like that you know they talk about y'all like oh this is like sturgill simpson makes you know the real stuff and jason is what makes

everybody has their own identity and their own uniform they have subscribed to and as soon as you step out of their understanding what they think you are yeah now you've betrayed them like kyle at saving country music he's literally the first person that wrote about me yeah you know he's always been supportive yeah but then at certain point, you got to stop calling yourself a journalist and realize you're just like a butthurt obsessed fanboy. And I'm not going to make Metamodern 15 times. Right. Right.

Nobody would want that. And if I make another country music album, then he'll be my biggest supporter again. But until I do what he expects from me, my records suck. You know what I mean? Why do people need there to be this alternative country? I don't know. Because they're hipsters. Yeah.

And that's their brand of hipster. That's right. That is true. I'm a hipster because I don't wear cowboy boots. But to me, everybody has their uniform, man, and their realm of understanding. Do you think it has to do somewhat with...'ve talked a lot about about this on the show that in the last 10 or 15 years or so there's kind of been this like revival of the south in terms of like aesthetics and like as a commodity it's oh yeah you think it's tied into y'all culture it's

so hot now we call it y'all culture yeah Bacon got hot, and then artists will catch up. But now, everything's just so southern. There's like, I don't know. It's fucking weird, man. You go to that new outdoor mall they built in Lexington, and even the trash can say, trash, y'all. Everybody's wearing these Michael Landon hats, like the Pilgrim hats and shit.

I don't know what's going on. I'm still dressing the same way i did 20 years ago i mean just because i stand up with a guitar and sound like a hillbilly when i talk i guess i'm supposed to put a fucking halloween costume i don't know all right somebody needs to explain that shit to me yeah yeah yeah i remember they used to talk about you wearing sneakers and stuff i'm comfortable i had to wear boots in the navy i had to wear boots on the railroad them shits hurt your back. I'm not going to stand on stage for two, three hours a night hurting my back. I want to be comfortable.

Especially now I've got money. I'm going to be comfortable. Do you feel like you've met a new type of fan? Oh, my God. We're all over the place now, man. I mean, Sailor's Guide, really, I saw. And that, to to me is awesome when i look out and i can see like 14 or 15 different subtexts of society all staring back that to me is like

willie nelson is a hero of mine and like he brought the rednecks and the hippies together in austin because somebody needed to yeah you know there's so much division and like divide and conquer mentality now um which i contributed to i guess in a way with that CMA protest. Somebody asked me what I thought about Donald Trump. I told him what they didn't ask me is what do you think about all politicians? So now you're like a leftist, progressive, fucking extreme. You know, I wish they'd burn the whole thing down but um but like to to look out and see rednecks and frat boys and punk rockers and and gays and and black people and just i mean that to me is like i don't know

how this happened but i'm gonna take it because as long as everybody's here to party and have a good time who gives a fuck you know like why do i need to be told where i belong i got a theory about that go ahead That cracked out synth. Oh, dude. God damn. That's the through line, man. Everybody loves that shit. Well, Bobby, my keys player, he's a bona fide genius.

I mean, no question. Musical engineer. The guy's on the spectrum. And I knew I wanted to make a rock and roll record, but what I also knew is I didn't want every song to have some wanking fucking guitar solo on it because that shit hasn't been cool in 30 years yeah we'll play a little guitar but this is definitely not going to be like a van halen record right um but like i love the cars i love dr gray i love elo you know all these things uh van morrison astral weeks there's a there's a moog synthesizer on that record everybody talks about how primitive and acoustic it gets sorry bitch there's a synth on there the beatles had mogs all over the place um so yeah we had a really good one we had a really good old i think it's a 72

mini moog model d and it just he was just getting these cool sounds with it and there's one record in particular i was like i want a moog solo when we dialed it in and we triple layered it and put all these octaves on it was just this big thick ass crispy fucking laser beam and i was like that's it that's the sound man like we're gonna put this shit all over this thing to the point like i want to see music critics hate this record because they can't understand what the fuck we were thinking you know but we were having fun we were watching samurai movies on the on the wall on mute in this tiny little shitty hotel in detroit and just locked in this thing for two weeks just like being geeks with nobody there to say what in the fuck are you doing yeah you know that's just so good and it was fun man

we had a great time now we're gonna go do it live it's like 52 nights and by the end of the tour i'm gonna wish we could record the record now because we're gonna figure out all the things you just don't process when you're in the moment right yeah um and surprisingly i a little a little bit was trying to destroy my career i'm like i'm totally at a point where i'm ready i probably got another this tour for sure we'll see how it goes but like i ready to I don't want to put too fine a point on it but I'm ready to go home and be a dad.

Yeah. Because I have enough. Yeah. And I don't know why I need to subject myself publicly to anything else anymore. Yeah.

Probably keep making records but as a father of three young boys and a wife I love very much, I kind of want to wake him up in my bed. But you owe the fans to go out and rock balls, and that's what we're going to do.

Yeah. You do. I feel like you handle your fans with a lot of love, even when they're wild. Tom and I. I just want to be a dude, man. Anybody, if you walk up to me and treat me like a dude, I will literally talk to a dude, man. Anybody, if you walk up to me and treat me like a dude, I will literally talk to you

all day long. But if it's that like weird gerbil-eyed idolatry thing and like the handshake lasts a little too long, I'm probably going to try to get the fuck away from you, man. Well, Tom and I saw you in Northern Kentucky years ago and a fight broke out right in front of the stage and you had to stop the band and say, boy. We had a problem with that for a while. We're just here to have a good time. We're literally up here like singing love songs

and like dudes are fighting each other. What is really going on? It's the state of America right now. I could draw a through line to that for sure. I would love to hear your theory. I have my own. Yeah, I think men in particular, they're lonely because they

they're not cultured they're not cultured to love my wife to feel my wife says uh because i'm a fairly masculine dude i guess i don't know i mean i'm a sensitive guy but like you know again you're this you're marketed people are marketed an idea of who you are and i'm like i got this deep voice i'm a big manly truck driving bronco guy you know i mean it's like you get a lot of that but the music is so inherently emotional and and personal that like you're you're arising all these undercurrents of feelings that manly men maybe don't normally want to like deal with they get a few beers in them and start thinking about that girl from a year ago that dumped them.

Then they look over at Flannel Joe and they're like, I'm going to beat your ass, man. Making me feel this way. Or maybe they look at Flannel Joe and feel other things they don't understand and they just want to process it. That makes them angry.

Yeah, that makes them angry. I've seen some of that too. I'm like, man, you're looking at me the same way your girlfriend is yeah totally natural totally natural right you gotta be honest you know well are you gonna um hit up gatlinburg pigeon forgery on the tour i went there on my honeymoon i went there and then we loved it so fucking much we went back on our five-year anniversary i got a story i love gatlinburg first of all my grandparents and my papa had a trailer on watts bar lake and in um just outside of knoxville blue springs marina and so we would go to

gatlinburg a lot in the summertime pigeon forage ride the go-karts hillbilly golf all that shit so when my wife and i got married i was still working at a grocery store. We didn't have any money and we weren't going to do anything at all. We were driving, we got married in Versailles, Kentucky, and we were driving back to Nashville. We were already living there. I was like, fuck this man. I'm not going to marry this woman and not take her on a honeymoon. And we had like $312 or something, literally. So we went to Gatlinburg and I'll never forget this i had long hair at the time and probably was wearing like some big old stupid elvis sunglasses or something and uh we're walking around gatlinburg now you know i was just crushing that deep fried oreo

and we passed this this couple and this dude was dressed head to toe in real tree camo. How'd you even see him? Exactly. He had a shit you not man. He had the most bitchin' mullet I've ever seen. When they walked by, he looked at me and he turned to his wife. I'll never forget this line. He goes, there's a bunch of goddamn weirdos around here. We died laughing, man.

I love Gatlinburg. I took my kid there as soon as he was old enough to ride them with the two-seater go-karts. Oh, love it. We went to every single go-kart place up and down the strip. Oh, it's so good. Before we get too far down the road, we had a little Pigeon Forge item we stuck a pin in. Yeah, that's why I brought it up. Before we get too far down the road, we had a little Pigeon Forge item we stuck a pin in. That's why I brought it up.

One Mr. West comma Kanye. Oh. Bringing Sunday service to Pigeon Forge. You want to know my Kanye theory? You had a Kanye theory started. All right. Here's my theory. Kanye, well, he's a marketing genius. I'll give him that.

And he used to be a musical genius. He kind of lost me after Yeezy. But I think he's running for president yeah i think he's really i think he's really running for president yeah so he knows he's gonna get all the like the coachella vote yeah so now he's like how can i get the right wing vote yeah you know i'll start a church and and go around with this maga hat and like build the constituency. That's actually, I don't think anything that man does is an accident. I think he knows how to use his illusion much like Axl Rose. Yeah.

And it's all, it's, and it's frightening how much we pay attention. Yes, it is. And feed right into the cult personality. But like, he knows what he's doing.

Right. Yeah. I've gone all over the place trying to figure him out, but like he knows what he's doing right yeah i've gone all over the place trying to figure him out but nobody's that crazy trust me i might be but you do wonder how much of it is like his own self-awareness of celebrity and how much of it is a commentary on celebrity and i'll say this i have the same birthday as him. Really? So I'm probably, I don't know, going to go fucking nuts too. But what I was going to say is, in case you've ever hated on his footwear design, don't ever try a pair of Yeezys on. Because you will buy that shit.

Because they are literally the most comfortable shoes you will ever put on your feet as long as you live. I got drugged to a shoe store in New York City by John Caramononica who's a pop writer in new york times because he found out me and kanye had the same birthday i was like i'm not buying these fucking shoes man you're out of your mind he's like well just come look at him just come look at him we go there try this shit i was like god damn it sure as hell walked out with some yeezys and then then he put the maga hat on and i had to throw a a $700 pair of shoes away just out of sheer fucking principle. Yeah, well, I mean, it's a MAGA hat.

I mean, come on, man. What's your favorite? Or go ahead. Go ahead. And I was going to say, what's your favorite Kanye album? Oh, man. I think Yeezy's probably the most punk rock record in the last 30 years. Yeah.

There's a lot of similarities between Yeezy and your most recent album in some ways. A lot of synth heavy that buzzsaw synth that he opens up but I love that fucking shit yeah um yeah man no I know I think he's really I think he is an artist an absolute brilliant artist I do believe that uh but I don't know what he's saying anymore with his art yeah I'm with you there what was the name of the New York Times writer you were with? John Carmonica. Yeah, John Carmonica.

Do I? Yeah, he's on Twitter and stuff. You've read his stuff. Well, I've read two of the things he wrote about you. Like, did y'all go to Jackson? I took John Carmonica to Jackson. Yeah, I was going to say,

you took him to Jackson. In a race car. I get fast and furious. I bought this Subaru STI and tuned it all to fuck, man. It's like throwing 550 horsepower to the wheels. It doesn't have the spoiler on it. It's kind of sleeper. But I watched Cannonball Run when I was a kid way too many times,

and the two Japanese guys in the Subaru. Yeah. To me, also all-wheel drive and a separate front and rear differential so I can manually throw power to the front or back wheels depending and i turn so they like slingshot your ass till you shit your pants like kurt russell sitting dread death with you really need to be sitting in my seat you know what i mean so i was like yeah i'll take you jackson man and we tore ass down mountain parkway um i mean yeah some tops some top speed shit i took him up high top mountain where the family

graveyard which is literally like a winding gravel coal road with a fucking sheer drop on on one side and we got on it man we straightened some curves and he's sitting over acting like he was cool with it my cousin brad's in the back he knew i knew the roads he's just about his thing's fucking awesome man um but yeah john John, a little bit might have came out. He was a good sport about it. I took him to Popeye's on the way home to make up for it. I was going to say, did he get a napkin on your mom's couch? No.

Well, she doesn't live here anymore. My grandfather died, so I bought, well, before he died, I bought them a house in Lexington so they could be closer to my mom so she could take care of them. And then Papaw passed. So yeah, the only family I got left in Jackson now is my uncle and some cousins that's the thing it's hilarious you gave him the New York Times reporter treatment he strapped him in he said he wanted to see where you're from I said okay man I'd love to we went to the white flash and uh drove all over all over jackson for like seven hours and then and then did like 148 back back down in nashville well it's interesting like i think the first thing of

his i wrote about you was in 2013 where you were playing in new york city and so it's like yeah that's right that bracket of time from that that first article in 2013. Not a lot of time. And then until now, I think this most recent one was in September. That article was still very much in the questioning life decision days. Yeah. Because I was 30, 2014, so I would have been 36. Yeah. 36 years old, which, you know, also maybe has has been you ask how you maintain that discipline coming into this game as a very cynical jaded 36 year old and not some thirsty bitch 19 year old

who's been doing this shit this is all you've been doing your whole life yeah like i can identify those people pretty much right off that like we are never going to have anything in common because like this is all they know is chasing attention and irrelevance yeah and i i'm slowly working towards embracing my relevance like there will come a day where i will disappear like david copperfield none of you motherfuckers will ever see or hear from me again i've already started you know yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's, gosh. Yeah, you should. You should do like a, honestly, do like an Andy Kaufman type thing. How do you know I'm not doing one now?

I mean, honestly, I kind of did. Yeah. When I did, when Metamodern came out, I literally had to talk to everybody. Because this is what you do. You're trying to build awareness and sell product and feed your kids. And you talk to everybody. And every journalist I sit down with, every single one of them wanted me to talk shit about Music Row. And at the time, I just like I had no need or want or I didn't know anything about it, you know, but they wanted to because my music sounded so different.

They needed this poster boy. because my music sounded so different they needed this poster boy yeah and you realize like at a certain point you're sitting down with these people for two hours and the whole conversation is literally just so they can grab two or three sentences to fill in the blanks on this piece they've already written or their editors already told them what it's going to be about and they turn you into this fucking poster boy yeah and i realized well there is no controlling the narrative you're you're just providing sound bites for their narrative and so when it came time to do sailor's guide i realized well all right all i ever really wanted was to be recognized and maybe shown a little bit respect from country music since i love it so much

and they made it very clear that that was never going to happen and that i did not belong in that world so much to the point even people on my team were telling me, oh, you don't belong there. Well, it's like, who the fuck is anybody to say who deserves to hear our music and who doesn't, or like where Margo Price is allowed to go play or be heard, or what platform, you know what I mean? Like the whole thing to me is like, oh, so this is just, there's less fucking politics in politics.

So if they're going to make me me that guy then i'll just fucking be that guy because there's money to be made there too yeah you know uh so i did i just started taking pisses and and and shit and every time i opened my mouth really out of self-amusement but i got bored with that so fast that it was like well shit why did i even do that because now you're like you're part of the fucking thing, you know? So I just stopped talking altogether. Do you think you could ever stop playing music, though? I mean, let's see. I'll always play music, man.

I played music my whole life. Before I did it for a living, I played music. Because I had to. Yeah. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel better. It makes me not feel pain. It makes me not feel depressed.

Like, you know, for all the good and bad as cliche as it sounds i'm a fucking artist i don't want to be an entertainer i'll never be an entertainer i'm an artist because i don't know what else to be all i know is what i feel luckily i found one woman in the world that's able to put up with it and not only put up with understand it and help me understand it better um but like yeah like i said if i disappear tomorrow i'm still going to be sitting on my porch playing music from and whether i go to these arenas and play these shows whether 10 people or 10 000 people show up it's going to be the same show because i'm fucking playing for me yeah so much to the point some journalists think i don't i

don't connect with the audience anymore well motherfucker, motherfucker, I'm lost in my head. I'm trying to find my bliss. Yeah. You know what I mean? And if people enjoy it, great. If they don't, they won't be back. Right. But, you know, that's okay, too.

I like theaters and small rooms more anyway. Well, if you succeed in tanking your career, come to Whitesburg. Come back. I'll come back. Come back with us. Yeah, we have theaters and small rooms. I'll come back and play Whitesburg tomorrow. Do it. I promise. I swear to God. to god those two gigs we had great time down there

i saw i saw i think y'all were talking about that's where i spent 10 years playing in rooms like that yeah you know this shit's all new to me man um and no i don't think anybody deserves this kind of attention or idolatry or adulation i'm not even like famous you know i'm like a g level celebrity you know i mean i get some weird shit thrown my way sometimes. But to me, yeah, I mean, it's, you know. I like the theaters. I really do. I'd rather be playing two or three nights in the same town in one beautiful room

where I can connect, and that's just being honest. I don't mean to sound ungrateful at all. I don't. That's just the reality of it. Let me pitch you on an idea, Sturgill. We want to do this thing called Trill billy days all right we're at and we want to do it at jim webb's property up on pine mountain and we just thought we might just do a no frills like come camp out and we've been looking for a headliner as it turns out i like you can pay me in fried

chicken that's good because that's all we got and i want to i want to i want my own dune buggy okay hey we actually can make that and we will give you the nicest uh wind stream on the mountain i have seen the wind stream i'm not a complete idiot i will bring a bus i got i got social anxiety man i'm gonna come a point i'll be like all right i love y'all but i'm done here i'm going to the cocoon uh no i mean i seriously like we play these festivals i'm just like who are these people that are paying all this money to come get a sunburn for four days man because it looks like hell out there totally and i'm in we're in a bus and air conditioned waiting to go play like we got it easy you know but like if you're

not it looks like hell you're breathing dust i'm looking at all these like third degree sunburns like drinking 10 dollar bottles of water i'm just like man that's my motherfucker we went to bonnaroo this year kanye was there yeah funny you mentioned kanye we went to bonnaroo one year but this year it was raining we had to go for work trust me i don't know it wasn't we didn't like but like i'll never forget this me and tom standing in uh the middle of a muddy road you know rain pouring water everywhere and then these people come up and they crowd everybody to the sides they stop nobody moves everybody to the side to get to the sides of the road. So we all huddle up against the sides of this road. And a big caravan starts coming through.

And it's Kanye. And I think he was with Kim Kardashian. Kim Kardashian and Kanye in a caravan of suburbans. Black suburbans. It was the most feudal, medieval thing I've ever felt in my life. You felt like a peasant. Like the peasants were being pushed aside. And like the king processed them. I can't remember what fest might have been a farm aid who john mellencamp

when he played like they closed the whole stage down like all the bands had to clear up i'm just like motherfucker it ain't 1984 who do you think you are he's a bloomberg guy he's a bloomberg that's what we're saying like michael bloomberg's paying all these people to do, like, to shield for him and stuff. And it's like, he has, like, the worst people around him because they're like, okay, who are the biggest influencers we can think of? And it's like, oh, yeah, John Cougar Mellencamp. So they drove Mellencamp probably a half-million-dollar check to send a tweet. I mean, don't get me wrong. He has some good tunes.

But I remember just being like, what the fuck is going on? I wasn't going to go up and watch Side Stage anyway, motherfucker. I'll go back to my air-conditioned bus and play PlayStation or whatever you do. I don't know. Let me ask you this, Sturgill. Who are you a fan of that people might be surprised to find out Sturgill Simpson's a fan of? Musically? Musically.

Or, you know, film or anything else. I don't want to say guilty pleasures because that sounds fucked up but you know what i'm saying uh music i see most of the music i listen to either predates like 1978 and back but like i'm a big fan of uh frank ocean yeah i think he's a genius uh i'm a i'm a fan of people who do things that I don't know how to do. Yeah. Or that I can't understand how they do them. Or basically anybody that impresses me, which is really hard because I'm a fucking asshole. And if it impresses me, I'm a fan. God, you put me on the spot.

God, well, anybody that's willing to work in a film just because it's such an arduous and crazy, brutal schedule. The directors, they also have to be a little crazy and visionary if you're good at it but musically i think angel olsen's amazing i think uh tamen powell's pretty badass yeah um i have all the same music taste i'm so i'm sort of out of touch to be honest because stilly dan you need to get into still i'm gonna get back to you on you now but like i was listening this morning i was listening to on the way up i got about a two-hour drive i don't live in nashville anymore um i listened to jerry rafferty and i listened to rod stewart and i listened to uh some whalers and i listened to 461 ocean boulevard by eric clapton did you know that Bunny Whaler wrote The Electric Sly?

Really? I did not know that. Are you serious? 100% serious. That's crazy. That's amazing. Yeah. It's probably wrong.

There's a lot of wrong facts on this show. No, that's a fact, and it's about vibrators. I don't know. I think that was debunked. That was debunked. Yeah, we put it on the sex ed page and someone was like this ain't right we're like okay we're always consider the source yeah i mean anybody that impresses me i'm a fan of even if it's like totally outside my wheelhouse which to be honest like i listen to

just about everything except country yeah interesting like like well i mean i listen to the older stuff and especially bluegrass music from, uh, from like mid seventies, world war two era. But like, I, I listened to all that so much in my twenties and mid early twenties absorbed it that at some point you just step away. Like I'm, and I'm not trying to make records. I've said this before. Like, you know, I don't, I don't want to make a Merle Haggard record because Merle already

did it and I'm never going to do it as good as he did. I want to make Sturgill records, you know. But I'll listen to fucking Goody Mob or whatever. Fuck yeah. Like, get pumped up. Like, Leaf Hound. If you want some good sleeper stoner rock from back in the day, man,

look up some Leaf Hound. That shit will... I literally... Matt knows Leaf Hound. I've literally watched it rock like two, three people straight to sleep. I mean... With a name like Leafhound.

I'm not going to give him up. I won't sell you out. But we hired a guitar tech and his first day on the bus. We did this charity tour for my buddy, Justin. He's a Green Beret combat medic, lost his legs back in March. And we went out to raise a bunch of money for him and his brothers and their families, like guys that didn't make it back. And then we were getting ready for this arena tour, so we got a new crew. Because now you've got to have like 40 fucking employees to go out and play these shows in these places.

And I had this guitar tech who I love dearly, so I'm not going to say his name. We were jamming some Leafhound in the back of the bus. It was a little foggy back there. And he was drinking some canned wine. And he came back and hit this big old tarantula boomstick. And we're listening to freelance theme and i'm watching standard like he's standing up with his eyes closed head banging because this shit's heavy as fuck and slowly but surely just like on his like timber man he like face planted right down in the floor of the back lounge and i'm like whoa what

happened and luckily we had a green beret combat medic there and he just so calmly reaches down and like trakes him and does some kind of adrenaline spike thing to wake him up and he kind of came out of it which was even more traumatizing than witnessing the guy passed out but uh i watched leafhound rock his ass straight to sleep dude all right what about the last good in my estimation the last good era of country music the 90s what about some john anderson tracy lawrence john anderson's god absolutely keith whitley god bless him not from the night we'll see again i grew up i didn't grow up there i went to high school in this town kind of like a 4 four H farm town in Woodford County,

Woodford County. And, uh, you know, we first moved to Lexington from Jackson. I got made fun of for the way I talked. And then we moved to Woodford County. I got made fun of the way I talked.

I was like, can y'all not hear yourselves? Like, what the fuck are you talking about? You're literally driving tractors to school, man. You know? And,

uh, it was weird. We had like a race war war they called school off one day because some kids wanted to wear confederate flag shirts and what the black students were wearing malcolm x shirts wow and it just got really weird and i was like where am i and uh fascinating yeah it was fascinating and what was the fuck was the point what were we talking about uh john anderson john anderson so yeah so when the 90s country thing took off you know i'm on like seventh eighth ninth grade and there's all these people got really into like don't take the girl yeah you know and i was like what happened man like i

believe if keith whitley hadn't died garth brooks would have never happened that's the theory i have like because the i think the neo-trad movement that ricky and those guys started in the 80s wound its way in and uh john anderson was a boss i mean i remember vividly being five years old and standing on the front seat of my mom's car like just screaming swinging and black sheep you know oh god what a badass and he still sounds as good as he ever did my buddy ferg just did a record with him with dan erbacher and it's just like, you will not believe how good he can sing. Yeah. My girlfriend just, she loves John Anderson.

She just told me. That 90s shit, no man, I checked out. I checked out. I was listening to like John May on the Blues Breakers and Mississippi John Heard

at that point. So I was just like, this is hot garbage. Where do you fall on Joe Diffie? On my face, I guess. I don't know. I don't know what does he sing he's there's a what's that song he has about uh oh oh didn't he just like try to do the comeback with like

a tractor rap thing or something yeah he just played no wait i don't know i do know about joe diffy i used to say everyone that's on a on motorcycle was Joe Diffie. I don't know, man. Look, everybody's got to get paid. And all of it, whether you like it or not, it creates jobs. It feeds people. I try to find the positive in it all. I just wish that it was a fair playing ground and that some of this was based on artistic merit. Or, you know, everybody had the same chance of recognition as, say, the people that are kissing the ring. But it will never happen because it's a hegemonic structure.

That's our takeaway today. Prop me up beside the jukebox. Oh, that was a good jam. Exactly. You know, Alan Jackson had some jams. David Lee Murphy, that's a goddamn slapper. We sang to that on the way here. I'm just, some of it, I just remember, like, I don't know.

I had my uniform, I guess, at the time. I was a greasy, long-haired pot dealer. So I had to be cool with everybody. But I like Wu-Tang more than that shit. Right. Well, I will say this, and, you know, I guess we're kind of getting here close to the end. You make an excellent zombie, Sturgill. Tom and I saw the Jim Jarmusch movie.

That was a dream come true. Yeah. It was like working with Jim Jarmusch. Dude, you have no idea, man. I saw Ghost Dog and Dead Man. Ghost Dog is one of my favorites. As a kid, like way too. I mean, dude, you don't understand.

When I got that phone call, he literally didn't even get the sentence out. And I was like, yes. Yes. Whatever it is, yes. And I was like, yes, whatever it is. Yes. And he's like, oh, OK, well, I'm going to send you a script. And, you know, if it's not for you, you know, and I read this shit and he did. The script did not have included that I was going to be a running joke throughout the movie. It was just like insert unnamed song title here where he's like, yeah the movie's called a dead don't die and

i was hoping you could you know so like i read the script and i was like oh this is talking about modern america and we're all like we all have our own distraction mechanisms or phones and coffee and the wool's being pulled over so we're fucking i get it so i was like uh i wanted to juxtapose it with like a really sort of sweet 60s sort of, not country-politan, but like a really melancholy, honestly, I tried to make a beautiful country song. Yeah. And to set against the mood of like a zombie film with Iggy Pop.

And it was awesome, man. I don't know. And then they called and said, we need you to come to set for two days and you're going to be zombie Sturgill. I was like, fuck yes. My ships came in. Damn, now I can retire. You know what I mean?

But that was awesome. The movie got pummeled by a bunch of dickheads that didn't, I guess they'd never seen a Jim Jarmusch film. You have to know, you have to be familiar with his work. The point of a Jim Jarmusch film is the film itself. He's literally making fun of it all. The most deadpan filmmaker. It was the most deadpan film.

I was like, how did you get your job yeah that's right and i bet you'll do record reviews with earbuds and that's all anybody fucking needs to know so yeah yeah that's right no jim's amazing and the song is great too the europe for him it's really good um that was but yeah seeing i went to the premiere not knowing that like i was a joke like 16 times sitting there just like this is getting fucking weird man it was surreal already but right bill murray just threw my cassette tape out the window like this is awesome bill murray and adam driver man that yeah that that cast was a caleb landry j Jones is fucking amazing. Caleb's a buddy.

Oh, sick guy. Caleb's a good buddy of our life. He was in Twin Peaks in Return. Caleb's a good time. What Caleb Landry Jones is. That guy and I, we've gotten some real trouble in L.A. Jesus Christ, don't ever stay out past 1 a.m. with that cat, man, because he's fucking crazy.

I love him to death, though. He looks like it. I mean, he's such a... He's so funny. If you ever get a chance to work with david lynch the last time i saw caleb was at the premiere in new york city and he and i and he had this he was dating this russian girl we all went out to uh the kgb bar in lower east side after the premiere we wanted to get out away from the cake and cock and all the horse pony show

and we went to kgb bar and it was literally we were the only three people in there with this Japanese bartender. Very Japanese bartender. I speak a little Japanese. So he was nice to us. His girlfriend was like, usually this guy is the rudest son of a bitch on the planet. Like he was being totally friendly. And then we started having a great time interacting and talking with him. And eventually this table of two or three people comes in.

I'll never forget this shit. Um, he was so annoyed that he had to now go and like, wait on them that he went over to their table and started doing the armpit fart and like screaming bonsai. I mean, he was like, he was like,

he was like, let's go. Let's go. Like doing the, doing the armpit fart. This went on for like two minutes straight. He's go, Simonas! Let's go, Simonas! Like, doing the armpit fart. This went on for like two minutes straight. He's just... And you see these people in an utter state of shock and disbelief.

And so are we, because we don't know what's happening either. But this guy went over and ran them out of the bar with his farting armpit until they left. And he could come back and hang out with us again. It was amazing. That's so fucking good. Take that energy with you. I think he's the shit. He's brilliant, man.

I think he's going to be one of the great actors. Like a Philip Seymour Hoffman. Yeah, I do. He's that committed and out of his fucking mind. Yeah. He's so cool. He's a sweetheart, man. I love him.

He's got a record, too. He just did. It's fucking crazy. Really? Yeah. He's a musician. He he cut it at valentine out in la and he played it for me it was just like this 35 minute non-stop psycho assault but it was brilliant it sounded like it sounded like sergeant pepper on crystal meth man i don't know what i was even listening to you say philip seymour hoffman i think Crispin Glover might be a little more approximate. I can say a little bit. Maybe somewhere in between the two.

I don't know. Yeah, he's a good guy. Yeah, he's brilliant. He's brilliant. Well, so I guess, you know, as we start wrapping this up, Sergio, you said you got a tour coming up. I do. I'm leaving in like a week.

Okay. I'm going to live. I'm going to alternate for three months between the back of a bus and a room somewhere backstage in the halls of an arena. And I'm just going to sit in red light all the time. Yeah. And we're going to have red light on the stage. And I've been working out.

I've lost like 22 pounds in the last three months. Congratulations. You look great. I'm trying, man. I got kids now. I don't want to be that dad that can't throw ball, you know? Right. I used to be in really good shape.

I just got tired of feeling fucking fat and miserable. So I'm just going to try to focus on my health and playing good shows and hanging out with my band because I love them. All important things. Got Mr. Tyler Childers coming out. Tyler's going to come out open. Always a good time i won't go anywhere near his bus because those boys eat dog shit

but i will hang out with him i'm gonna do a lot of racing i think on my days off i've been i've gotten eat up with this going really fucking fast thing so what kind of racing like um well i like to rally that's why i bought subaru we live way out in the country on all these two lanes i'm gonna talk too much because they're our local law enforcement but um i i'm a really good driver okay so i want to get really better um so the thing about having like fans that are nascar drivers is that you can like finagle your way in driving lessons for tickets and then formula one is also kind of some shit i'm into yeah but really my real dream is to break the record for the cannonball run which just got recently reset

and broken and it's going to be really fucking tough to beat because these guys went full-on jason bourne like spotters and airplane recognition software it's just like it was insane they got incredibly lucky, too. They didn't hit any construction from New York to Redondo, but I'm going to break their fucking record. Please be careful. I got this. I know you said you were trying to tank your career, but...

Let's not tank it that much. No, man, it's about an untamed sense of control, like Roscoe Holcomb's voice, you know what I control like roscoe hulcombe's voice you know what i mean you just gotta get him you gotta know where the red is you know i agree well good luck with that good luck with breaking the record and thank you so much and i can't i can't promote it because it's illegal as shit but just just know like that but just know one day maybe two three years four years five years from now you're gonna look and see this guy who used to maybe play country music standing in front of his sleeper-ass ride in front of a hotel in Redondo Beach

with the motherfucking record. I hope so. I hope to see it. I hope to see it. Hell yeah, baby. Well, thanks so much for doing this. My pleasure. You guys are awesome.

I don't know. My wife, she made me aware that you were aware. I'm not on social media, so I don't really know shit anymore. And what you guys are doing, especially in East Ritaki, is really beautiful. Thank you. I appreciate that, man. I appreciate you doing this. We know you don't do too much. I try not to.

I'm lazy as fuck, man. So are we. We appreciate you rolling out this red carpet for us most pretentious hotel room we're actually in a trailer somebody likes me i'm not leaving this yeah we're on pambo lake actually well they were like do you want them to come to you i was like that's too far i'll drive to nashville and then i don't know who even i don't know who did this i'm sorry but there's a i just want to out, there's a fucking beer keg in the room. All right.

It's so good. And an espresso maker. It's got everything. I'm going to drink it all. I'm going to drink it all. You guys can stay here tonight. I'm going home. You can trash this place.

I'm curious to know what this big fold out. I guess it's a bed. That's a bed for sure. Let's find out. Pull it down. Here we go. Oh, shit. It's a bed. I knew it.

Hey, Gail, we figured it out. We figured out the massive cut down in the wall. Well, anyway, Sergilsson. I'm just saying, though, this room is not in my name. Okay. You can trash this place. I don't give a shit.

Is it in Gail's name? Okay, okay. I'm probably paying for it. Is there anything else you want to plug before you leave? Besides breaking the Cannonball Run record and the new tour? And if people want to buy

tickets to the tour they just go to your website I like books if you're everybody's looking for a good book to read the last book I read

kind of blew my mind it's called A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James hell yeah is it noir no

it's like detective story it won a Pulitzer, and to me, it's the most original voice novel I've read since probably the first time I read Confederacy of Dunces. Okay.

It's all about... I love that book. It's all about mid-'70s Jamaica and specifically the U.S. government and the CIA's involvement in the drug trade there that they facilitated out

into New York with the Shower Posse gang and bought the money back to use to buy weapons that they then used to with the Shower Posse gang and bought the money back to use to buy weapons that they then used to train the Shower Posse gang to attempt to assassinate Bob Marley and successfully assassinate Michael Manley, who was a revisionist politician and threatened. Yeah.

Marlon James, right? Marlon James. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It blew my mind. Melina turned me on to it. I've read it like seven times now. It's amazing. That's all I James. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It blew my mind. Melina turned me on to it. I've read it like seven times now. Yeah. It's amazing.

That's all I got. Well, that's an excellent plug. That's a good plug. Marlon James. Get some. Yeah, get some. All right. Thanks for coming out.

Thanks so much. Love you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I figure lots of things are good But they don't add up so much compared to you And I'm gonna do as a good man should I'm gonna bring my lovin' back on her home to you I've seen a lot of...