wellRED podcast - Sod Punk Papawtism.

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

We are joined today by Karly Unnasch: sculptor, artist, farm boy and resident IAB papaw. DJ DJ Lewis is currently immersed in the land of dairy and papaws, working with Karl, learning, and having a big time. Today we tell ya all about it while discussing art, sod punk, generation gaps, cultural divides, and Star Wars.

And we thank them for sponsoring the show. Well, no, I'll just go ahead. I mean, look, I'm money dumb. Y'all know that. I've been money dumb ever, since ever, my whole life. And the modern world makes it even harder to not be money dumb, in my opinion. Because used to, you, like, had to write down everything you spent or you wouldn't know nothing. But now you got apps and stuff on your phone.

It's just like you can just, it makes it easier to lose count of, well, your count, the count every month, how much you're spending. A lot of people don't even know how much they spend on a per month basis. I'm not going to lie, I can be one of those people. Like, let me ask you right now. Skewers out, whatnot, sorry, well-read people. People across the ske universe, I should say. Do you even know how many subscriptions that you actively pay for every month or every year? Do you even know?

Do you know how much you spend on takeout or delivery? Getting a paid chauffeur for your chicken low mane? Because that's a thing that we do in this society. Do you know how much you spend on that? It's probably more than you think. But now there's an app designed to help you manage your money better, and it's called Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app

that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money shows all your expenses in one place, including subscriptions you already forgot about. If you see a subscription, you don't want anymore, Rocket Money will help you cancel it. Their dashboard lays out your whole financial picture,

including the due dates for all your bills and the pay days. In a way that's easier for you to digest, you can even automatically create, custom budgets based on your past spending. Rocket Money's 5 million members have saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscription with members saving up to $740 a year when they use all of the apps. Premium features. I used Rocket Money and realized that I had apparently been paying for two different

language learning services that I just wasn't using. So I was probably like, I should know Spanish. I'll learn Spanish. and I've just been paying to learn Spanish without practicing any Spanish for, you know, pertinent two years now or something like that. Also, a fun one, I'd said it before, but I got an app,

lovely little app where you could, you know, put your friend's faces onto funny reaction gifts and stuff like that. So obviously I got it so I could put Corey's face on those two, those two like twins from the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movies. You know, those weren't a little like the Q-ball-looking twin fellas. Yeah, so that was money. What was that in response to?

What was that a reply gift for? Just when I did something stupid. Something fat, I think, and stupid. Something both fat and stupid. But anyway, that was money well spent at first, but then I quit using it and was still paying for it and forgotten. If it wasn't for Rocket Money, I never would have even figured it out. So shout out to them.

They help. If you're money dumb like me, Rocket Money can help. So cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney. dot com slash well read today that's rocket money.com slash well r e d rocketmoney.com slash well read and we thank them for sponsoring this episode of the podcast they're the what is up everybody welcome into the abisket i am drew drew dollars we have a great show today our

very special guest is carl unash the sculptor glass stained glass maker papal, farmer, all around, amazing man from the rural areas of Minnesota. DJ staying up there, you're going to hear all about it. I wanted to say that DJ and I will be in Bristol, Tennessee on November 18th. I will post a link to that

tomorrow as I record this on Wednesday night. So when this comes out, you should be able to find a link at least by the time I get up here on the West Coast. DJ and I will be in Bristol, Tennessee, at the Blue Ridge Comedy Club, a brand new place. If you're from an area, you need to get out and support it in general. Come see us. Buy tickets to our show.

Papal Carl will be there, is my understanding. He will be with DJ bringing a part of the project we're working on. It won't be finished. You're not going to get anything that amazing out of it. But you're going to come and fellowship with it. us and joining in on ArtShare on November 18th. Obviously, Well Red is out and about. You guys know that.

Go to Wellredcomedy.com for tickets. But check out, I guess I'll post on Twitter and on Instagram the link to me and DJ's November 18th show. Let's get it going. I don't know why I'm doing this. No one finds it entertaining. It's not very funny. and anyone who falls for this

says something cool probably is not a fan of any of the abisket. Let's be honest, because you guys are super smart. That's it. I think, I feel like there was something else. Oh,

we're probably going to take a hiatus for the holidays. I don't know how long. I don't know what that'll look like. Just wanted to let y'all know. And, uh, okay, cool. Bye. Oh, and follow Papal Carl.

I don't think we had him plug. His social is this Carl Unash art. I'm going to try to spell it without. looking K-A-R-L-U-N-A-S-C-H-A-R-T on the social media. I think I got that right. But if you look up Carl Unash, you're going to find it. You're going to find it. There's only one.

He's one of the kind. Hello, listeners. It is now 15 past the hour in the Market Square, beautiful Hallerville Heights, broadcasting live from Hollerville FM's 15 million megawatt satellite that is in no way liable for any skin cancers, growth, auditory, or visual hallucinations, past, like life progressions, bad karma, or psychic vampireism. And now, Into the Abisket, with Dollar Store Drew Morgan and DJ DJ Lewis. Welcome into the Abisket.

My name is Drew, Drew, Drew, Dollar's. I'm here with DJ, DJ Lewis. He is there in the cabin in the Great White North, and he is joined. If you're watching on the Patreon, you can see if not, we'll go ahead and tell you, bring it in. Papal Carl, Carl, introduce yourself. Hey, everybody. My name's Carl Lunish, and I live out in the country in southeast Minnesota.

And I'm an artist full-time. Do a lot of gardening, do a lot of rebuilding things, a lot of stained glass. For those of you know about me, a lot of public art, getting some pieces finished up here in the next two weeks, along with the new project coming up that you'll hear a little bit about today. So that's the, that's the nutshell version. I'm sure we'll get you a little bit. Yeah.

Yeah. And you're, you're putting DJ to work. I'm hoping, I'm hoping to see this man's new muscles. I feel like he's going to get new muscles and new places. Like his forearms are going to be jack soon. He's all,

he's getting all pop-eyed out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's more of a brain workout than it is anything else. To be quite honestly, is I'm running a saw and I'm slinging a lot of turning to a thunderbunk and I'm slinging a lot of wood. I'm slinging a lot of wood.

So sounds like forearm muscles to me. Yeah. Yes. It's been interested, man. It's been a great, a great ride man with this man. Well, yeah, I guess to not to bury the lead too much or whatever. DJ's staying up in Minnesota working with Carl. I'll let y'all talk about that or, you know, how interesting or uninteresting or scary

or how many fights you've been in or what you got going on with that. But from an end of the abyskit perspective, we're collaborating. And DJ's on the ground collaborating day to day. I'm a little jealous and a little relieved that I'm not there being worked like that. but it's really cool to watch. We can, you know, I'll let Carl talk about it however much or however little he wants. We consider it an extension of the end of the abisket and eat fruit and fuck community in the church and the art chair and the tour we went on last summer, extended in the next summer.

Carl, what's on your mind about it? As we're sitting here, once we're all done talking today, we're going to go back. to what we call the annex. I've got 10 acres here in southeast Minnesota that I picked up in 2008. And for those of you who know what went down in 2008, we had a little recession going on. And I was playing poker with my banker. And I got to talking to him about possibly picking up property. He says, well, you should come down to the bank and talk to me about that.

So I went easy on that night just to soften a little bit and went down to the bank next day and we talked about it and got a loan together and I picked up 10 acres out in the country. Not far from where I grew up in southeast Minnesota. We talked about this in the past with the initial archer. Bumping forward to where we're sitting right now, after archer, we got to talking all three of us a little bit about similarities to our philosophies. and art and working and living and living out in the country living rural and separating ourselves or maybe stepping back from a lot of distractions that keep us from living a good life and long story even longer we're talking about collaborating on a project now but to do that we got to be in

proximity and it's kind of hard when one fellas in California, another one's in Georgia, another one's in Minnesota. So I think we got all three or four or five time zones covered at the initial onset of this, and that was its own challenge. For sure. Where we're at now is DJ and Dre and company, we're looking to be less distracted from the good life. And we talked at length. And I said, well, I talked with my wife Nicole about having them as house guests for some span of time, short or long or however it works out. Because of this project that we're going to be working on together, we've already, initially we've already started it.

Not to say too much about that. But to do, to work on this project together, this is quite fortunate because now DJ is here in Minnesota. and what we're doing right now are what I call a cutting in phase. And DJ and I and we have, I have a part-time apprentice, Ian, who's helping us out. And even friends are coming by here and there to scramble a little bit, throw a wrench or push a building in a little bit or hump garbage, whatever, digging the hillside, making goat trails.

And we're working on the annex. So DJ and Dre have a house to live throughout the winter while we work on this project. nice cozy spot because right now they're in the bus which i'm surprised how comfortable you guys are but you know you can speak more to that but i believe it's going pretty good yeah always going great uh it's a great thing and it's a great initiation into uh what what what we're trying to build on because uh carl is teaching me the language of the tools and that in and of itself is something very interesting. I know we've talked about on here before with myself.

You know, I was given the only skill I have really is I'm a charming motherfucker. You know what I'm saying? And I'm pretty funny at times. And coming out of prison. and immediately having to get a job and say they don't teach you anything, you know. Of course, I'm interested in art. I'm very much, I love it. And, you know, I feel like I've been able to grow at it, especially in prison, was attracted to that.

I was able to learn to it. But now actually learning, you know, what I'm looking at and seeing the thing. Carl also was a teacher. he is a master of everything. Just so we're clear, we mean literally, right? You've taught numerous times at the university setting, Carl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

But I sniffed out the innate distractions that were there from politics to outright corruption. And it was, it wasn't, it wasn't the, it wasn't the, college i remember when i was in my 20s going to university myself um and it wasn't a matter of nostalgia you know wishful thinking but it was more like do these kids even want to learn anything or do they just want to degree and one day i was teaching some foundations course and one kid who was in a criminal justice program obviously he wasn't an art major but he was taking this for general ed credit it taking my course. He pulled off the old

C's get degrees and I says, well, here's your C, there's the door. Because if that's all you want to do in this world, there's nothing I'm going to do that's going to convince you at this point. And the administration didn't much care for that, but I said, hey, if you're going to have me go through motions, I'd rather take that energy and spend it on, to teach a student,

spend it on a student that is more interested in learning something than someone who's already signed him to him or herself off when they entered the door. I can't save people who don't want to save. If somebody wants to drown, I can't help them. I can throw them a ring, but I'd rather throw that ring to somebody who's actually, you know, reaching for it. That sounds a bit harsh, but also I grew up in a kind of a harsh place out in the country

where you got to either call the herd or really take the hit as a farmer, as a gardener even. You've got to weed the garden. A lot of folks don't want to hear that. But I'm also of the mindset where you take care of your own first. It's kind of like living in an airplane. If you are flying an airplane, if the masks come down, airpressure drops, you've got to help yourself first and help the ones close to you. And that mentality, I think, serves us well in this case.

I want to help out a DJ and company so we can help ourselves out in that same regard. if that that isn't too convoluted. Not for me. DJ, I'm wondering if that harshness he just referred to, are you experiencing that yet? Are we still a few months away from that type of feeling in the winter there? And also, I didn't mean to cut you off. I just wanted to clarify that Carl was a literal teacher.

Keep going with your thought there. Oh, well, I'm at adventure stage right now. absolutely dreading the snow. We saw snowflakes coming in from Minneapolis and I was like, oh God, I'm not ready. You know what I mean? Which that was an interesting

thing. Anyway, so yeah, as far as like it being rough, it really I, what I'm really struggling with right now is like I think more than anything is like, especially when I look online

or see something and I see something back home. I see what's going on in Brookwood with the minors. I see I have this, you know, with people who I was involved with in mutual aid groups and stuff like that. Things, ways that I could help. Oh, I'm not there anymore. Shit. I'm not there anymore.

I'm here doing this. And of course, just like what he was saying, you know, learning to help myself. being helped. That's a lesson in its own. You know what I mean? That in itself. And so it's really just been interesting.

So I don't really, I haven't really thought too much about the weather except for when we first get up. Like, because we're like in the bus, like in the back of it, it's like a little, it's like a little bucket pizza oven. You know what I mean?

It's like, we're back here. We got to, you know, me and Dre got our little thing worked out and we're up there with Ness. see you in the dog and they're just all cozy and it's like ooh then you put that fucking cover back and jump off and you're like god damn you know what i mean jesus i saw DJ come in early morning i was up i was on youtube actually watching construction videos just for some tips on this annex work and i heard him come in and uh and i said i'll be out in a second for coffee

and he's hunched over at the ring. He's like, adorable. It's pretty all right. So is this sort of, in either of your minds, is this an apprenticeship that's going on? Is it a partnership? Is it just, I know that eventually we're collaborating,

but at the moment you said you were learning the language of the tools, DJ, are you feeling like a student right now? Are you feeling, you know, what's that, what's going on with that? yeah this is very very much a joseph campbell situation where you where you you know meet you know obi won in the desert you know i mean and tattooing or whatever and he's like we've really mixed up some metaphors here and i love it yeah so yeah he's like come with me i'll show you how to use this fucking lightsaber buddy you'll be cutting fucking jabba the fuck up where you know it and i'm like fuck yeah fuck jabba you know what i mean But it feels very much like that. It feels very much like I'm, I don't know what, you know, I'm definitely, we've talked about this before, me and Carl had several conversations about poor people bring.

And the weird things that it does to you. And I can't, I don't know exactly what parts of me are just taught through. things that I've learned through poverty, you know what I'm saying? Like bad habits that I have in myself that I've picked up to poverty, like not looking towards the future, you're just trying to get that,

you're just trying to make it through today. So like the future doesn't make, you don't feel like there's a future anyway, so you're not looking for the future. You're just looking to get through today. You know what I mean? And, but I've been,

In this weird, this weird state of mind now where like, you know, my observations of how things are, even in Minneapolis, man, even in their cities where there's fresh produce. And if you get a certain amount of points on your fucking quick trip card, you get a pound of fucking produce, man. A free pound of produce, fresh produce. How insane is that, dude? And they're, you know, it sounds sane. It sounds sane. Yes, exactly.

And you're like, oh my God, dude, this is, this is insane. It's, to me, not to be looking at a bunch of cratum and fucking dick pills and fucking meth pipes and like, it's so bizarre to like finally like go, dude, you can't buy liquor on fucking Sunday in Georgia, but you can buy a crack pipe all fucking day long. Like, what? You know what I mean?

Like, and like, it's crazy to think. It's crazy to think of like for so long or so, again, so many people are like acting like having this victim mentality, but now realizing, holy shit, man, y'all have been victims.

Like, you've been victimized. Like, dude, that's why you have this mentality. And it's like, it's sad, man, it's sad.

And it's, yeah, Carl, do you have any thoughts on why that is the case there? Because it's not, connecting with me to simply say Southern versus Midwest. I know,

you know, I know meth hit Iowa real hard. I'm just curious if you have any theories on what sounds like DJ's reporting is the health of your community and the existence of a real community. Well, we talked about this on the,

we took down my show Minneapolis yesterday, so we had a nice long car ride straight to Minneapolis. We followed down the river at a beautiful ride all the way down to La Crosse and dropped it off the house and then came back to the studio property here. And talking about that, one thing came up that I surmised by that comparison of the, let's call it the bodega health. Like what was a bodega in Europe where everyone went to the corner store to pick up their provisions and a few vices too, you know, provided for all aspects of one's living. necessities wants. Our quick trips are basically just a chain of gas stations that provide food, coffee, hot sandwiches.

They got fried chicken now. I haven't heard the verdict yet. I haven't heard of the verdict yet. I don't want to be disappointed. I'm really loving the quick trip. There's never need to ruin a good thing, you know? Right. They got smoothies.

You can make yourself a healthy-ass smoothie up in that bitch, man. What the fuck? Dude, it's crazy, man. It's crazy. Well, here's the reason. I'll tell you one, my assumption is, I mean, firsthand, is that we live in a frigid area.

I mean, we live in a wintry area. And to get through the winter, there is this innate, at least for a lot of folks. I mean, this comes from firsthand knowledge growing up on dairy farm. There is this need to nest and prepare for winter. Because we were at the end of a dead end road and we were self-sufficient. you couldn't just run to town and get the things you needed in the emergency. You had to have canned goods.

You had to have dried goods. You had to have, you know, beans or rice, all those things. Thank goodness we had, you know, milk on a daily basis, but you had to make sure the power rents. You had to have gas on hand for a generator, run the farm one with the tractor PTO, all that stuff. Like this preventative maintenance mentality where anything could possibly go awry in a second. And in the middle of the heart of winter, that's, compounded, you know, things break down in the cold, you know, you'd rather, there's a, there's a

saying, I'd rather sweat than shiver. So that's where all the layers come in when you build up the layers. DJ knew about that coming up and now he's finding out firsthand, you know, being in contact with the cold. One second that you got, you know, a bunch of layers on in your practical cold, and the next second you step out in the sun and he's like, shit the bed, I got to peel layers off here. Yeah. So I get to watch him get dressed and undressed all day working with him. Yeah, yeah. I start off and can't even fucking team me. I got stuff like shit on, huh?

Sorry, we got a delay. I said that was the real plan. Carl just wanted to watch you get dressed and undressed. You out there looking like a marshmallow man. Yeah, he's got that little Ralphie from a Christmas story. Look to him. It's adorable. That is adorable.

I have to, going back on that point, I have to bring up money. I have to ask about poverty. I'm just so curious, are there dollar generals every 10 miles? And there are dollar generals. Is it possible? Have you insulated DJ from the gas station with meth pipes? Or is that legitimately not a thing there? It's legitimately not a thing.

The only place you'll see something even close to that is in some of the harder hit areas of the metro area, like Twin Cities and whatnot. Even in La Crosse, which is a town of maybe, I don't know, 80,000 or so. Even that town, you know, the rougher areas, I mean, that's a drinking town, though. So that's an old beer town. So their vice is pretty much well and established. And like you said, yeah, there was a rough patch of meth labs and whatnot, rural meth labs going down for the last 10 years to 10, 15 years down in Iowa. And they were busting them hard. That was the whole spate of, I was telling DJ about, you know, you'd reading the news about,

construction sites getting ransacked for copper. So people take that in and get their vice money, you know. Yeah. I look at the meth stuff, though, less as a, what vice does any particular town have and more of a signpost. Personally, maybe this is wrong, bad analysis, as a sign of community health and poverty. So that's what I'm curious about. DJs, from talking to DJ, you know, I used meth pipe as a,

quick, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? Just as a shorthand. Yeah, right. For what all the things DJs reported back, which is healthier food at the gas station. And so I guess I'm trying to ask about

all of that. And perhaps I am biased, but it sure feels like money's going to come in at some point. And I'm wondering if maybe you have family farms there and not a lot of corporations who are extracting the wealth. I'm just trying to touch on what's happening.

Why are cigarettes so much cheaper in the South? I mean, cheap, man. You can get a three-pack special, which I haven't smoked. Smoke the first day I was here and then, but I haven't had cigarettes since. But like, fucking cigarettes from what I can get a three-pack special for back home, they're selling like one pack of cigarettes.

Like, that's got to be. I don't know, man. They like, they, they, they care. I mean, right? I don't know. Well, I can, I'll speak to that somewhat, too. I mean, I don't, I don't know if it's a work ethic thing that's, that's boiled into the system. I don't know if it's, I mean, we're one of the, if we, if we're not the best state-run programs for art support, like financial art support, if we're not,

the best. We're in the top three. But I'm suspecting we're in the best. Here's, you hear, listen to this. Here's one smart thing. Legislators did. State legislators did back in the day. Talk about partnering up. This was back in the, or maybe early aughts and whatnot. Ventura was, Jesse Ventura, remember he was the governor there. We had that wild spate. However, one thing that came out of that was the sportsman and the arts came together and got legislation for a lottery program. And the lottery program, a percentage of that goes equally towards environmental support for sportsmen and the arts.

And I've been a beneficiary, both of that, because I hunt fish and I make art. So it's been one, it's been a damn good idea that it was a little revolutionary at the time. but when two disparate areas come together for the right cause, think about how that, you know, that coalition, for lack of a better term, has now boiled itself into the system too. And that's not going to get taken away because both teams there are loving it. They never have to sit at the same table again, but that's boiled into the system.

That's one of the many things that are going on up here to help people out. money yeah it goes back to money in that regard um there is there is a generational work ethic i mean i'm i'm a recipient and a purveyor of it um grown up on a dairy farm and bust on my ass trying to make things done but the thing is i'm also self-employed so i get to answer to myself and no one else so if i don't have my shit together then i can't i can't help out my family i can't help my my friends out I can't help out anyone else until I get my shit together. I think that's important. And that can be damn stressful.

You can lose sleep on that, especially when people aren't paying their checks, you know? Yeah, everything you're saying about a work ethic is true. I just, you know, and pardon me, I'm not meaning to push back.

I agree with what you're saying about yourself and your area, but I just don't buy that other places don't possess that or possess those people or that it hasn't been overcome some way. As DJ said, people have been victimized where I grew up. And it's been ripped out of them. And I'm just, I'm frankly, mind-blown by what I'm hearing from DJ. But, you know, keep it sacred.

Fight for it. Like, fight for that community. Don't let anybody take it. You know, pay attention when some company's trying to buy 500 acres or whatever, you know. I'll speak to that, Drew. I'll speak to that. Ten years ago, and this goes into the topographical and geological strata of the area down here. Everyone, if they haven't heard about frack sand mining or fracking, to give the short version,

it's the high-pressure forcing of slurry into the ground to force oil sludge up so that they can refine that. Obviously, you read the news about that going up north of us in Canada. Well, that requires resources that we have here. And that's the sand that's the deep time sand that's in this area. We're all limestone. We're not granite like up north. And for a while there, there were corporations trying to come in and tear up all the plateau

hills in our area in the Driftless area here. And there was a lot of pushback. people did come together and they stopped that shit. Hell yeah. Yeah, you saw signs up all the time. And between that and power lines going in too close to residential areas and whatnot, there often is a lot of pushback. But I see that starting to soften a bit too,

given our political situation on a grander scale. Generationally, you know, I'm obviously a Gen Xer. And a lot of my generation, I call it. us the sages. We've seen a lot. We haven't fought much in the way of wars, but we have seen a lot and we have a lot of knowledge. Now, will people listen to us? I don't know. Maybe when we're about 20 more years in the future will be the old sages that everybody wants to come up on the front porch if you'll let us up there. I think we're already listening to you. I don't think it's a coincidence that we call you a papaw as a joke, even though you're not that much older

than us. And I mean that. I think that our generation is so cynical towards boomers, just so unbelievably cynical towards boomers. And frankly, because we lived on the internet, because we created it, you know, you guys invented it, we perfected it, all that stuff. I think there's like a cultural, yeah, but they're rad kind of thing to it. You know what I mean? It's like, these dudes invented rap and grunge, you know, and it's like that kind of thing. So I'm hoping that that works out. And we always joke, not really, that, you know, when Gen Z starts throwing bombs, you know, I'll be in the packing plant. But maybe you guys will be running coordination.

But anyway, I found that all wildly interesting. I don't want to bog down our whole conversation. I want to get more into your artistic philosophy and sod punk stuff and all of that. I don't know. I mean, honestly, I think I'll just open it up to you. to talk about how you got started in the art world or wherever you want to begin from? Long story short, as I always was tinkering. I was always tearing stuff apart to see how it worked and not being able to fix it again. But at least I figured out, you know, what the structural

integrity was of a lot of radios, fans, tape recorders, VCRs, like, what were the guts in these things? So my curiosity is what drove me to... figure out how things were ticking. I don't know if I learned a lot about the mechanisms, but I learned a lot about tab A, slot B, and what that means is I learned how to make things fit together in space. So it was how to live in space, and then from there, going in undergrad learning,

how to just use materials, how to paint, how to sculpt, how to use different clay, cast metals, stonework, all that, just the fundamentals of it. And then from there, trying to figure out what direction I want to take, which I think the hardest damn thing a person can do is just say to themselves, okay, I'm going to commit to this, this vocation. I'm going to, and I'm going to do these things. When you don't even know how to run it as a business,

you don't even know how the community works that you're trying to get into, boy, what a learning curve. And it took me over 20 years just to get to that point. but also making your point to listen. And that's what I think one of my longest lessons was, is to shut the hell up and listen to what people have to say and listen as loud as I can to what people had to say. So I can absorb knowledge, process it, you know,

again, pick it apart, figure out how it works, and then how to put it back together. So I have a truth to tell. So I have something I can say. So I have a mission to follow, given what I know and what I'm curious to advance toward and what the future holds for me. So that brought me to doing stained glass. I jumped in, of all things, here's a here's a here's a here's a here's a here's a

moment, a gen Xer moment. I actually answered a newspaper ad for my first job. Pardon me. This was buzzet. And an actual newspaper ad to work stained glass. Now what is an newsreeper? right exactly well DJ's finding that out yeah I read the Fillmore journal every week that sounds so made up it comes in the mail once a week yeah yeah um had beers with the owner

he's he's always it's fun I get to uh when I run over to cars brewing and fount and uh Jason settery is there he's the owner and chief editor of paper and he has a couple in him and he starts to tell me how great it is to have an artist in the community and then I have to look in my and go yeah he ain't done a story on me in a while where he at you know so it's fun and it's and that goes to the community doesn't it you get to go right to the banker you play poker with the banker and you drink with the chief of the paper there that doesn't hurt it's not like your buddy buddy with him but at least you can have face time with him like literal face time to use a retronym yeah that's that's that's that's

part of that community side where if you can cut it up, despite whether you agree with the philosophies of the people that you're in a community with, at least you can cut it up with them every once in a while and agree to just enjoy that space of time that you're spending with each other, you know? Carl has a very wide range of interesting individuals in his orbit. Feel free to talk about that. And also, pardon me for cutting you off. You were talking about your stained glass job.

Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, go ahead. Well, just learn how to make stained glass. Learned it in 10 minutes, and I've been still trying to perfect it since. Not doing much stained glass right now. Did some this summer for that show. But that's on hold until we get that annex building taken care of. So it becomes a cozy little home for these guys.

So I'm in home renovation mode up until Thanksgiving at this point. So that's where I'm at now. But I'm using all those skills that I keep picking up over the years in making art. One of the things about making art, and I can talk to this openly, knowing a lot of artists too, is that, boy, I have a great community that I can ask a question from if I get a hitch in my brain where I'm just like, I don't know what to do here. Tiana, who came out that you were introduced to, she, beer attends at our friends brewery in Lanesboro, but she's also setting up her own woodworking

shop. And she has, she was born in a construction family. So at the age of 13, she was building houses with her dad. And her dad said, here's your tools. Here's what you need to do. Go do that for a while. And she would sweep sight. She would go cut, use a use a chop saw like somebody else is learning how to do and doing a damn good job, I'll add. He can still count to 10. That's good. That's good. When you get down the sticks, that's when I'm going to have to intervene. Yeah. Right. Not one Band-Aid, not one wound, and that's the thing that we're going to, you know, let's keep doing that, you know. But learning slowly and learning how to do that.

So anyway, Tiana came out and I asked her, hey, can you come out and do a consult? I got a beer for you. Let me know what you think I should do with this. She came out and she said, jack studs here, cripples there, fix that sill, and then one-third the way up on your peak, that's where you can have your horizontal braces, you know, things like that. And I've got all the material on hand because I'm, you know, a borderline hoarder. So most of the stuff that we've been using to repair this building,

with aside from the full flooring, which you want nice treated plywood and joists, it's coming from the stuff I've been saving up just for this job. So you've touched on the friends and the array of people DJ kind of brought up and alluded to, pardon me if it sounds rambling. I'm going to say something and then ask you a question. I think about, I've been thinking about my own father as you talk a lot. My dad is a very handy carpenter. He has very little skill in the way of beauty. but in terms of function, he's all over it. And there's been many times inside my family.

My mother has a huge family. There's like eight or nine sisters and two brothers. So my dad is everyone's carpenter. But like he raised up and fixed my Uncle Mark's floor. In exchange, my Uncle Mark works on our vehicles. Always has, always will. We have to pay for the parks, but everything else is basically free. And then dad does all their carpentry work and stuff.

but I do see that fading generationally. But one thing that I feel pretty strongly about as that fades, I mean, one is if you think about my parents and my uncle Mark and them's kids, we're all over the country. They encourage us to go to college. College led to the types of jobs and interests that don't necessarily exist in small towns. Number one, but number two,

and I'm not super sure why this happened, maybe it was scarcity of jobs, Maybe it was just the American dream having to evolve over time and always be fed by something new. But I can recall my dad saying things like as a joke, but over time it becomes not a joke if you keep saying it. Well, Drew doesn't need to learn how to swing a hammer anyway. He's going to be my lawyer. Now, it was a positive statement. It was meant to encourage me to continue my studies.

My father would, you know, when I was younger, give me money. for A's. When I was older, he would talk to me about how much his back hurt. I mean, he would, he was, in fact, instructing me. He was not relaxing off his post as father. He was saying, you were going to have a better life than me. But something, there was a, there was a, something became missing. There was a missing piece there, I think. not having the skill in the world inning I think that I think that and then also the community aspect of it

the American dream I think became a very individualistic approach so I was encouraged to go to school make A's and then I'm going to be able to make all this money and my cousin Tasha kind of the same way and, you know, she's a consultant for Teach for America and her husband's a doctor, and they've got a great life in Birmingham. And they're building a good community. I've met her friends.

They're great people. But she had to work really hard in her 30s to do that, whereas that came so naturally to my parents. Well, I guess my question would be that community that DJ's talking about, the wide array of friends, the people that you call over, whether it's going down to the editor or your friend. I think you said her name was Tatiana coming over and giving you construction tips. Did that occur naturally? Did you have to, you know, are these all people you used to know? Did you have to work hard or, you know, be kind of a gregarious guy that I know you are to get to know those folks?

How did that come about? We're talking about a perfect storm of necessity. Number one is I grew up in a community where people helped each other. There was a story of an old bachelor farmer who broke his leg. and he was about 70-something at the time. He didn't have anyone else to put his hay up, and then when they were doing square bails. The community came together,

and this is back in the early, early 80s, late 70s, and all the men, typically, the men got the hay up, and all the women got together and baked and made a big old potluck, and it became a community event. And there's still, I remember there's still, I remember seeing beta,

oh boy, now we're really calling it, A beta movie, somebody took of this event back near the farm. And you see the hay chop lay going up the elevator into the barn and all the, what you call the mammoths standing around a table outside with a tablecloth on it and feeding everyone. That was out of necessity from, again, like I say, baked or boiled into the system, depending on how you like your potatoes. Another thing is, is my vocation as an artist. I was talking about earlier, it naturally we're curious, which I think is one of the best qualities

a person can have to survive is you, and I call it, you know, this constant barrage of whatification, what if I do this, what if I look at it that way, what if I seek this out, what if this, what if that, and if you're curious, you'll be magnetized towards certain things in the world that makes you say, hey, that's interesting, let me go sniff that out for a while, or hey, maybe I, that looks a little danger, Zunite. And then maybe we'll, we'll stay away from that, or maybe we'll study that a little further. So something I've been telling DJ, I don't, and I tell apprentices in the past, and by the way, this isn't an apprenticeship, this is a teaching partnership, something like that, I'd say. I wouldn't consider him, he's a co-worker. And he's showing me things, too, which we can

get into some other time, but it's mutual benefit. Back to talking about being curious. You also have to be a living antenna to be curious. You have to be receptive. You can't put up these walls and say, well, that's all interesting, but why don't you listen to what I have to say? Well, how the fuck are you supposed to learn anything? If this is going all the time and these are not working and this, you know, absorb that shit, process it, make your brain sharper, and then file that away for later if you can't use it now. And then use it later when you need it.

It's just like, it's just like putting up preserves, you know. If you can't use it now, save it in your head and know it's worth something. And then when the time comes, you're like, oh, I saw that once, I could use it here. How about I do this? And it gets you closer to a solution. And you don't have to rely on hope to get things done. You can actually have the skills tucked into yourself at the ready to go get things done. So for me, it just comes out of necessity, too, not just being an artist, but being out of necessity for what I have to do.

It just keeps building upon itself. That makes sense. That makes perfect sense. And I tell you, it's just crazy that you'd say that, like, relying on hope and, like, the necessity of hope in a lot of situations. Yeah. You know what I mean? So it's a strange thing to a lot of people don't have skills, nor do they, to build on what, on what they're, to go past hope. You know, hope was all that they can rely on.

You know, we have a friend right now. Well, anyway, I'm not going to do that. But yeah, man, it's, yeah, man, it made a lot of sense. Yeah, for sure. They're playing sot punk. Yeah. That's, well, I mean, a lot of folks are familiar. This is my little dalliance.

It's a little philosophy that I've been, like, developing. All these, like, little fantasy genre punk imagery. You've got steampunk. You got atom punk. You got cyberpunk. Now you've got bronze punk. you've got solar punk, which is close to what my philosophy is, my sad punk. Like when you put punk on the end of any word, it means you're, to me, it means you're reacting

against control and power. You're reacting against, you're fighting against an established overreaching or overarching or basically you're under the foot of a giant and you're trying to get out. You're trying to dig your way out. You're trying to work your way out. You still want to thrive and you still want to be alive. You still want to feel alive. So for me, thinking about that, the old term being an old sadi, where I remember being in an alfalfa field that my dad was digging up with a John Deer B in a three-bunned plow.

And he was digging this in the spring, digging up this field and folding over the sod. And you saw the underside. and there was this beautiful array of, and you go on YouTube, you'll see it, but seeing it live when you're a kid is fascinating because this machine is surgically removing the top layer of growth, flipping it over so it can be tilled up and turned into a tillable acreage,

be planted with a new crop. What I would do is I had an old camera case, an old, like, analog camera case, and had the velvet, the red velvet inside and the brown leather outside with the shoulder strap. So I'm eight seven or eight years old Star Wars just came out and I got my first Star Wars action figures for Christmas and I would tuck them inside that camera case and ride with dad. And then I would sit on the edge of the field and I would take these little chunks of sod. And I already saw pictures of Adobe houses in the Southwest.

I was making buildings for my Star Wars action figures, and I was making my own worlds to scale. And I figured out the architecture of sod and sticks and posts without ever being told. I'd break off some sticks on the edge of the woods and put them in the center of this square of sod built up like walls. And I'd try to put the sod on top, and of course it would fold in. And I said, well, something's got to push it up. So I went and I developed a post and put the sod on top, and that kept it up. And I could just play with my action figures on top inside.

So I built my own play set because we couldn't afford that. I built it on the edge of the field. And that kept me within dad's eye shot so he could see where I was, so I was safe. At the same time, I was kept busy with my own imagination, making his little worlds. That's my first introduction to Sodpunk. When you take something natural, and you go against any other thinking, and it becomes something else that is progressive that makes you free, that makes you feel alive.

It helps your imagination and feed your curiosity. Fast forward to now, 50 years later, 40 years later, I still have that mentality of what can I take from the natural world? What do I see going on? Three basic principles of physics. the lever, the screw, and the inclined plane. You take those three principles of physics, you can do just about anything you want in the world.

You don't need a computer. You just need curiosity in those three things. You can move a mountain with a big enough lever, right? It's just down to physics. So those three things, if that was the principles of sod pump, if you get the right type of mindset and the right type of people together, you could take those three things,

those three basic primal, found in nature principles of how physics works. You could build a wall, you could build a home, you could you could build, you could dig a well, you could build a wagon, you could hitch up horses, all these things. A knife is basically a wedge, which is basically two inclined planes together

that splits material. if you think about it. These philosophies are just basic. If you take the basics and make them complex, but they still retain their selfness, the lever the screw in the incline plane, and then you grow some sod on it, and then you got a little garden over here,

and then you make preserves, and then you smoke a little something, and then you have some seeds later, and you plant them later, and you still go take that stuff that you grew after you smoked it, and then you weave it into a rope, and then you take it and you make a pulley, which is basically a lever, but it's circular,

and then you take, and you pull down on one side, and then you're lifting up half the weight instead of all the weight with the muscles that you've already built up by doing all these things out in the woods. You can make yourself a life that is very revolutionary and progressive at once. But the thing is, is how does that make it sod punk? It's because we're so inundated with complexity now that we're becoming distracted.

We've become distracted. from important basic principles of what it means to be alive. Growth, movement, and how do you live in space and how you become an antenna and how you absorb your environment. Those simple things alone, plus a few others that, you know, if you were drinking, we'd probably just, you know, kick them out and like that. We could rattle them off and figure out, you know, what the tenant is of it. I don't have a written tenant, but I know what feeds the concept of SADPELP.

And that's basically, you know, that kind of concept of reality. That's so beautiful. I think it's so interesting that you essentially just gave us your artistic statement, your artistic philosophy, the core of who you are as an artist. And it goes all the way back to you were, did you say eight, ten? Maybe. I had to be, I was seven and 77 and Star Wars came out in 77. So it had to have been, I had to been eight years. years old. It had been the spring of 78.

That's a, I find that so interesting. I want to ask a quick follow-up. I think it's quick. From talking to your other artistic friends and DJ, you can chime in here yourself. Do you find that it's common that artists have a mentality that started shaping that young? I think it's innate. Yeah. I totally innate. It's innate for him to be a funny some bit, you know? and of course, you know, poor Drew, he's settled with being good looking, so what are we supposed to do about that? He just can have to do with it.

Make it work. Yeah, that's hard. If you guys, make it work. I appreciate you recognizing that. It means a lot to me. You guys recognize my struggle. No, man, definitely. I could say,

uh, go ahead. Definitely innate. Oh. Yeah, man. Definitely innate. And I think that, like, a lot of people, I think, you know, having the opportunity, there's something about being able to have tools, the language of the tools, once again, or the language of the tools and be able to understand the tools,

whether it be a paintbrush or whether it be, like, even in regards of what your craft is, you know, It could be in organizing. It could be in, you know, the pen. It could be writing. Whatever it is, with comedy. It's comedy. Having access to the tools and learning those tools and learning those fundamental parts of it. But for me, personally, and I think you would agree with this, the connection that I felt with Carl's art on top of this philosophy,

resonates with not only these times, but, you know, where I, you know, tools and help myself, honestly, be able to grasp the tools to become a greater artist. And I better understand myself and better to understand the world. to understand the way that things work. And it's strange how it all, how it all kind of comes together in this weird, in this weird little mix.

Anyways, anyway, sorry. No, don't be sorry. I agree with all of that. I think you touched on it there when you said, these times and then also mine and what you were essentially getting at was your circumstances. And it's, there's something very resonating about the way Carl's approach to art and life.

feels well hopeful. It feels like there's something inside it that can connect to where we find ourselves in this moment. And by that I mean we as a country, as maybe the world, and the moment being,

oh shit, we don't make anything in this country. I don't know where my water comes from. I'm not sure. I mean, my own dad talks about this. It's like, how do you get food. My dad knows how to garden. He knows how to hunt. Most of the people around him do not. If the supply chain breaks down as we read about in our newspapers and on our little phones that we also don't know how they're made, it's warning us it's going to happen. I think a lot of people are feeling, I don't know what I would do. And there's something beautiful about the artistic

and practical way of Carl's expressing, right, well, I do. And more people can and should. And it's a matter of work. Yeah. It's a matter of doing. Also, like how this all is like, with you just bringing it back up because it's been such a crazy thing for me experience. It's like just a local quick trips and stuff like that, the cast stations

and stuff like that and how they're handing out these tools. The tools that they are using and their retail and stuff like that, they got employee owned grocery stores up here that are and everything's clean too, man. it's like they have a community

a community big ass community box where you could take your aluminum cans and it gives back to the community they have a there was a turkey warehouse or a turkey factory or you know they got laid off a whole bunch of Hispanic people right well now all over the place I guess they're looking for

jobs and they're offering free English classes you know there's there's a mighty fine bit of Trumpism and what have in and things blue line up here. You don't say. But it doesn't seem as a great, yeah, I know. But it doesn't seem as even as aggressive as it is in the South or like it doesn't have

that weird. I think mainly, I think mainly what a lot of people around here are feeling is like with Minnesota, with like George Floyd happening so fast and close to here. I think it's like, you know, they don't want that shit. They don't want people burning down there. I don't know. I don't know. They just really felt it,

but they don't really understand and they're feeding, getting brain worms and stuff like that. But it doesn't feel like the same type of shit, man. It's weird. It's all right. Don't be sorry. I just,

you know, I don't know. It's a healthier hatred. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, yeah, this is,

yeah, there's no desperation in the racist voices around here. No. Well, it's like they're, Well, it's like they're offering, like you hear it all the time. You see signs all the time. They're offering free classes to the, like, non-English speaking folk.

They, they're giving back to there's community shelters. I mean, there's community shelves. There's food shelves. There's fucking, there's all types of programs here to get involved in the area. And, like, get involved in the community. There's all types of opportunities to be able to help people. It's all, I mean, like, they're big on that, man. And it's wild to think.

that like, you know, how in the South, like, you know, so many people are still caught up on like, let's succeed. And I look back on it, man, and I realize, like, in my community, even as much work as I did and tried to help, like, nobody, nobody fucking cared about anybody, not about me, not about anybody. Nobody can't fucking chicken market can't fuck about me. You know what I mean? And they don't give a fuck about each other. They don't.

They're letting. You know what I'm saying? They were offering $750. A Republican person out here was offering an extra $750 to cope from recovery relay to mental health services. You know what I mean? That blows my mind, you know, for, you know, for, you know, for, for, for, women who are, uh, the whole other whole, another bit of money going into like domestic

abuse, domestic abusers for the batterers. You know what I mean? Like, hey, man, if you're basically. and you're old lady coming out here to this class. We'll teach you how not to do that. Oh, shit. You did say they like cops. But you don't never see them.

You might see one. That was just a domestic violence joke, DJ. I think the delays are all the illness. I wonder if that's also related. I don't wonder. I would argue that that's related to where we're from. This thing happens, and I think it happens all over the world,

definitely happens all over. America. Some entity or entities will conspire to drain the resources quite literally from a region. You can look at it with coal. You can look at it with

what happened with the pill epidemic. There's numerous things you can look at it with where we're from. And once that starts to happen, a coal company comes in and they're extracting these resources and the wealth of a region and they're offering low-paying jobs. Those low-paying jobs create

animosity, poverty, problems. Those people who have those problems often end up blaming each other and the Mexicans and this and the that instead of who's at the top. And that goes back to, you know, I'm recognizing that this is my own personal philosophy, but I do believe it. It sounds like you ain't had that much there yet, at least not since the white man first came. So that's sacred. Like I'm telling you, man, like if that's what's going on in your corner of Minnesota, make sure that these farms stay family owned as best you can. Make sure that they're not extracting your limestone as you referenced earlier.

That sounds sacred to me. Yeah. Well, I think with me, it's like I wonder how to change the sound. How to change the people because they are, man, because, you know, motherfucker's got to wake up. You can't just be stopping rehabs all the time. You can't be like you have got to invest in your community. How do we get people to care about each other again in the South? How do we do that?

How do we do that? How do we reach out? What is the function here? I mean, having not lived there in so long, you know, other than a few years here and there, I don't think I'm qualified to answer that for sure, man. I don't know. Well, damn, we ended on a downer. Are you a Yankee?

Is this considered Yank? Yeah. I mean, I think the O.G. Yankee is definitely like northeast. You know, but where we're from, dude, do you ever heard the phrase California Yankee? Oh, hey, that's one of my favorite ones. That guy, there's a California Yankee. And you're like, what does that mean? He's from California.

Yeah. Very much, yeah. Well, those are the new lines that are getting drawn now, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever Civil War is trying to be brewed up here that everyone's trying to, you know, the fight for or fight against, that's, that's, it's coming. I don't, I don't care what anybody says. I may be a downer here, but unless, unless people start learning how to look past these, these distractions that goes back to the word I use all the time, you know, you talk about,

you know, like in the South, uh, people, People, the systems are put in place to keep people down. So it's some form, some crazy form of amalgam of indentured servitude versus slavery, poverty, you know, hatred stew. You know, I'm going to hate you because, you know, you've got a little bit more than me. And while I'm looking at you, all these some bitches up on the rocks up here above the rock, Corey, are sitting there smoking cigars and drinking coffee. And just like Johnny Cash talked about. You know? Right. Yeah. And that's happening everywhere. How do we lock arms? How do we become the sportsman and the artist say,

okay, let's do this together. Oh, well, look at that. Yeah, how about that? Yeah. How about that? And just that that may be a spark. I don't know. I have no idea. Yeah. No, we're not going to solve the world. I can really help the person next to me. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that's important. And that's why I dig what you. what you say and what you do, man. I guess to sort of try and wrap back up or lean back on a little bit of a lighthearted note. If you're not on the Patreon,

you've got a lot of stuff up there. You can see DJ's tour of his bus and some of the stuff we referenced. You can also see what is essentially a one-hour interview or episode with Papal Ron Cooley. And I want to hear if Papal Ron Cooley has been back around. What's he up to?

I need my Papal Ron Cooley. We're actually, me and Dre, we're going to go down there a day and talk to him a little bit. We're going to, we're headed up there soon. Okay. How's he doing? How's he doing? He's got the best smiling world. Fucking worse his ass off.

Nobody, he is the epitome of work, man. That man, don't do nothing but work. What'd you say? Yeah. Yeah. He's slowed down, but he doesn't stop. I understand that. What you got there?

finish off. There are already there today. Here. Here's something you're going to get a kick out of. I'm going to hold this up. Yeah. See that right there? See that? What do you see? That's a spider web looking like it's burnt or engraved into a tree stump slice. No, I'm going to, can you still focus? Now take a look. What do you see? I'm going to be honest, man. I got blurry internet on my I am from y'all. I don't know if it's a connection issue there in rural Minnesota. We finally found the one thing y'all don't have in rural Minnesota. It's great interview. Right. Well, I'm going to have DJ describe what he's seeing.

That looks like rice to me a little bit. No, no, no, no. It is rice. Yep. It's rice and grains. This is a spider web made with rice and grain. So it is ingrained. Hey. Sorry.

Yay. Now read the back. Carl Eunice, Chafield, Minnesota, age 12. Damn. That's crazy. How did your parents respond? How'd my folks respond? To you making sod worlds at eight, to you doing that, which, like, I feel like my wife could do it. You know, she's artistic-ish, but like, you know, she's 34, not 12.

Mm-hmm. Well, it doesn't matter your age. I mean, obviously. It does to a certain extent, though, when a young person shows that type of proclivity is what I meant. How do your parent, do they recognize it? Do they go, there's something different about this kid? No, I, this goes back to, and this is a downer thing, unfortunately. We all, we all understand.

I'm sorry, but it's the truth, man. If I'm going to speak truth, I ain't going to lie. If you're told at an early age, don't get too big for your britches, and you exhibit, you know, some innate talent, for lack of a better term, then you have to do that in the dark. Yeah, work on your stuff in the dark. So to speak in code, because I don't want to shit on my parents, dad was busy trying to make sure that the farm didn't fold because he's busting his

ass. He's working like a coolie. And mom was making sure that none of us died in a horrible PTO accident or get trampled by cattle and make sure we're fed, made sure we get on the school bus. was. After that, they were, I'm sure, very, very tired. So it goes back to us writing our own playbooks as creators. I guess we're on our own, so we're going to have to figure it out. Lucky for me, I didn't, I was stubborn enough to not quit and give up. And maybe that's something to share with people, too, is you've got to be more stubborn than, than, you know, what you're taught. You can and can't do and just believe in yourself. I mean, and if you get, we were talking about this yesterday, If you have permission to believe in yourself, right? Yeah, man. Yeah.

And telling people, given someone the permission to believe in themselves that they can't accomplish something, even if it's small, it's significant. Get to it. Yeah, man. Well, that is not negative. That is super positive. What a great ending. Everyone, you have permission to believe in yourself and just be more stubborn than what you were taught.

Yeah, man. They're beautiful. You beautiful, some bitches. beautiful mother letter out of my beautiful. Yeah, they better start being beautiful. All right. I love you guys. Love you too, man.

I want to do the fart dance. The fart dance. It's out of my fart dance. Good Lord. She looks like death eating a biscuit.