WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1562 - Jimmie Dale Gilmore

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

One of the reasons singer-songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore didn’t get a solo record deal until he was in his 40s is because he took an extended time away from music to live in a spiritual community. Jimmie and Marc talk about the search for enlightenment in the midst of being a trendsetter for Americana music. They also talk about Jimmie’s band The Flatlanders, Texas barbecue, hearing loss, Willie Nelson, and Jimmie’s recent collaborations with Dave Alvin from The Blasters. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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How are you? What the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fuck, Nick? What's happening? What the fuck, Okrats? Embold into what the fuck, Okrats? What's going on?

I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast. How are you? What's going on? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast. How are you? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast. How are on? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast. How are you? Welcome to it

Welcome to the show if you're new here, just hang out sit down listen You'll get the hang of it if you're not new here. What is going on with you? What is happening? How is your life? Are you alright? Are you cooking right now? What are you doing? Are you working on that thing for the thing? Are you on the treadmill? Are you walking? Is it a nice walk? Are you having a nice walk?

Oh, look at the little doggy. Look at the little doggy. Oh, what's happening? I'm home. I've been home for a nice extended bunch of days. Today, Jimmy Dale Gilmore is on. Now, Jimmy Dale Gilmore has been around a long time. He's a singer-songwriter, he's a founding member of the group The Flatlanders. He's also an actor who a lot of people know as Smokey from The Big

Lebowski. He's got a new album out called Texicali that's a collaboration with my old pal Dave Alvin from The Blasters. Dave's the best. And look I remember when kind of when Jimmy kind of surfaced in a big way with this sort of Americana music thing that was happening. I guess it was late 80s, early 90s maybe, maybe a little later. But I hadn't really heard about him in a while and he came up as an opportunity to talk to me. And I'm like, hell yeah, what's that guy been doing? What's that old wise man Jimmy Dale Gilmore up to? So that's who's on the show today, and we had a nice

Nice conversation it kind of went a lot of places. He's got one of those brains man old style Just post hippie brain goes a lot of places so get ready for that and music of course So anyways before I left the last time I was here Of course. So anyways, before I left, the last time I was here, there was a major rat event in my crawlspace in the basement. A major rat event. I didn't know how major to just get everyone up to speed. There was more rat shit than I'd ever seen in one place in my life.

This wasn't just sort of like, oh look, there's a pellet or two. There's a couple of the droppings. We've got a problem. Thousands of rat shits. Thousands. And I spun out. a couple of the droppings, we've got a problem. Thousands of ratchets, thousands. And I spun out. I realized it hours before I left the last time and I got the shop vac and I was like freaking out

and I'm like, how many are there? And then I found a dead one. I didn't poison it. I don't know how it died, but that's what got me into the basement in the first place was the smell. And I managed to get rid of that. That's jarring.

That's a jarring experience. It's something that you really have to, and I mean this in a multi-gender way, you really gotta man up or grown up up or whatever you up up to get that rat out of there in the garbage. I usually use a shovel, but then I had to put gloves on and use my hand and feel that tail and drop it into the bag and oh god damn it. But

anyway that's what happened the last time so now you're all up to speed on the story. So I set a couple of those like slap those traps that just like kind of I think they're the most humane way you can go. Can't do sticky traps, can't poison because that goes into the ecosystem. There's just those traps where you put some peanut butter and they step on the thing and boom, breaks their neck. I put a couple of those out. Not happy about it, but I spent the last couple weeks just anticipating and preparing for two trapped rats, two dead rats with their heads stuck in that fucking trap and me having to deal with that. I thought like I was preparing like maybe this would be a good TikTok video.

In what world? Me walking down the stairs to open the basement to see if there's rats there. But I get home, no rats. No rats. That was a relief. You know, your brain, you know your brain. Do you though I? Think that part of the worrying brain is really just about the thing you were worrying about not happening It's a buzz man

Like and I I hate to think that my entire neural pathway system is built around that moment of relief but you know when you're just sitting there like, oh, fuck, and you're preparing and you're ready, and especially when it's like a, you know, a gross and horrible thing like dead rats, man, I opened that door and there were no dead rats. And I was like, wow, this was worth it. All that panic of having to fucking pick up dead rats

didn't happen. What a load off. And none of it was, why couldn't I have just put it aside? And just been like, yeah, I'm gonna do this and not think about it, but that's not the kind of brain I have. So no dead rats, and then I efficiently cleaned everything. Me and Ernie, the handyman wizard,

there was one gap that they were probably getting in through. And then I kind of looked all around in the dirt down there, because this crawl space, not really a basement, just like I just think that rats have probably been using my basement, my crawl space as a toilet for generations. So I got all that cleaned up. It was one of those excuses to really go through and clean everything out down there. And it's all nice and clean and I want to uh not thank but just give a a shout out

To whoever the one guy Who after I talked about this on the last show vacuuming up rat shit Took it upon himself to email me and tell me how you know, I shouldn't vacuum it because i'm making the rat shit aerosol And the rathit's full of Hantavirus. So now like when I got back, I'm like, fuck, I gotta go dig into my mask stash from the COVID days. I had some pretty hardcore masks

that I never used during COVID, because they were only one way, but they were the real deal with the little valve on the front. Got suited up, put a hat on, put gloves on, because that was the other layer of the last couple of weeks, the layer of like, what does hantavirus feel like? I, you know, my stomach's not great. Do I have hantavirus?

I don't. And I did mask up to do the other vacuuming, but so just a shout out not a word of thanks There was probably not hantavirus in that radship, but I appreciate my audience as being sort of you know Obsessed with the dark minutiae of possibilities Thank you for that Yeah, you know what no. Thank you. I don't know. I don't think I have hantavirus You know what, no thank you. I don't know, I don't think I have Hanta virus. Folks, I'm gonna be in Tucson, Arizona

at the Rialto Theater on Friday, September 20th. Then I'm in Phoenix at the Orpheum Theater on Saturday, September 21st. You can go to wtfpod.com slash tour for tickets and to see all the latest updates to my calendar because I had to reschedule a lot for next year because I got a movie to do that now all of a sudden I'm very nervous about. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp, folks.

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about this movie I have to do because I'm the lead in the movie and now I'm like oh can I do this? Am I gonna be able to do it? again Set the worrying dial at full There you go Always layers and layers of worry and panic did I mention better help? so look folks I It's been nice man. I I've been back long enough to completely regroup with the cats. They're all doing fine. Sammy has become interesting. He's no longer just stupid.

Charlie is still an asshole, but he's mellowing out a little bit. Buster, of course, the the great wizard of my cats. Buster is a sweetheart and a very smart fella. He's the one that talks. You gotta have a cat that talks, right? Talking cats are the best. But they're all doing fine and I kind of locked in. I hadn't been doing enough comedy so I got home and I booked two spots a night for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Went to the comedy store. You know, that's part of my heart, man. The Comedy Store is part of my heart. But I'll tell you, man, and I'll tell you, I'll tell you, I'll say it again, this whole sort of new cultural landscape

we're living in, where Kamala Harris, you know, is in the game in a big way, and it's just so motivating and exciting. And again, even if she doesn't win, look, it's kind of brought everyone, the sort of decent people of the world who believe in tolerance as being the primary lubricant of democracy.

It's kind of reinvigorated us and brought us together, at least culturally, in a very real way. And I'll tell you, man, just because of that, just because of what that reality, the reality of her has lit up in certain people, myself included, it's just such a relief because all of a sudden culturally you see the other side of what's happening in this political landscape as being tired and hackneyed and

and just cruel and so narrow-minded and it's just such a relief when the shitty people have a shitty week or two. And you gotta take some satisfaction in that. And maybe I've said that before, but I'm starting to kind of find a groove with it a bit on stage in terms of this new reality we live in. It's just the fact that there's now a candidate

that can talk and connect and communicate ideas and what's important in terms of salvaging, at least culturally, a democratic idea just about being tolerant and kind to everybody in terms of whatever their lifestyle is. And hopefully, maybe it's even in my mind kind of made you know the comedy different in terms of how tribalized comedy has become and how now you can really see with a kind of new rejuvenated sense of what tolerance and live and let live and just let people live the lives they decide to live for themselves with a certain amount of safety and freedom.

It's just interesting to see that the comedy that has been built around pushing back on that, how just fucking hackneyed and tired and uninteresting and cowardly it all looks. Look, this all might be going on in my mind. It may not have any real bearing on the real world, but we're probably going to talk about this more on the bonus material this week, me and Brendan, because I think that's sort of where we're going with it. Hey, folks, it's summertime, so there are things

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Alright, Jimmy Dale Gilmore. Look, this guy's a veteran singer-songwriter with definitely yarns to spin. His new album with Dave Alvin is called Texicali. It's out now. You can get it wherever you get your music. You can find their tour dates at jimmigilmore.com. This is me talking to Jimmy Dale Gilmore.

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Well, we started out in Austin. We live outside of Austin in Spicewood. You live in Spicewood? Yeah. Opie's? Not, not, not actually in Spicewood. You live in Spicewood? Yeah. Opie's! Not actually in Spicewood, but...

Opie's! But our address is Spicewood. Opie's BBQ! Oh yeah, although we're vegetarian. Me too. Except I'm a cheater vegetarian. What do you cheat with? Barbecue!

I go to Opie's all the time. I used to. I've been a vegan for about a year and a half but I go out there yeah, and But I used to every time I go to Austin I drive out to Opie's and and and she takes care of me out there She's real nice. That means you go right past we we live off Off of Perth Nellis Canyon Trail. Yeah, it's it's uh, just before you get to the river How long you been out there? 30 years. 30 years? Yeah. Doesn't Willie live out there too? Yeah, he lives over,

you know, you're going out 71. Yeah. His is off to the right. Yeah. It's the same place. Yeah. Basically, we're off to the left. Yeah. On the other side. Are you guys pals? We're friends. We're long time friends, but we never have really hung out a lot together, you know, kind of due to circumstance mainly. Isn't that weird about show business? It is, it's very strange. You know, where you have these relationships with guys for decades, and every time you see them, you're like, hey!

But like in terms of day to day or going down the street, it just doesn't happen Yeah, everybody's touring right exactly. Yeah, and plus we since we moved out there like I said 30 years Yeah about and and you know what I'm gonna do something what this hearing aid is coming off and on Yeah, I'm gonna take it off Entirely yeah and rely on this guy and see if it works because. Cause I could probably turn up the volume in the headphones. I probably could, yeah. Let's see, let me see if I can figure that out. How's that?

Is that different? Oh, that's good, that's better. Okay, good. Yeah, that'll make sure of it. Yeah, I once interviewed a guy who had, I had interviewed a guy named Studs Terkel years ago. Oh yeah. Yeah, and he was very old and it was not here, it was back in New York and he had two hearing

aids on and he took them both off and he set them down and he put the earphones on and we turned it up so loud you could hear it bleeding into the studio and he goes, perfect, that's good. Yeah, mine aren't quite that far gone. Oh, that's good. But they're enough that I want them all the time. What do you think it is? You think it's from the music?

Probably not. You're not blasting. No, although I've always been surrounded by people who... Blasting? Dave Alvin is... He's a blaster. He's literally a blaster. Literally, yeah.

But the original audiologist, when I first had... He said it from my history, it probably, well, he said music isn't so bad because it kind of hits all the frequencies. Yeah, yeah, right. But it was probably like a factory job I had when I was like 19 or 20. Come on.

That was a repetitive noise. Right. Very loud and, you know, like I ran a drill press and there was talking. Where was that? In Lubbock. Oh yeah, when you were a kid? of noise. It got very loud and you know like I ran a drill press and and where was that? In Lubbock. Oh yeah when you were a kid? Yeah I was 19 I think 19 or 20. What was the factory making? Gin equipment. Oh for cotton gins? Cotton gins yeah. Wild! So it was machinery it was it was metal yeah metal machinery you know drilling holes yeah holes and like stamping out stuff.

And the whole place was loud. It was very loud, yeah. And that's where you come from? I was born in Amarillo. Amarillo, Texas. But I grew up mainly in Lubbock. Yeah, I don't have a sense of those places. Like I grew up in New Mexico and I know Dallas,

I know Houston, I've been to El Paso, I know Austin, but I don't know, and I know Hobbs kinda. Hobbs, New Mexico. Hobbs is sort of like it's almost related to Lubbock. Yeah, and it's so much similar territory, similar landscape and everything. And like so, and when you were growing up, what was the music?

Cause like I've talked to, who have I talked to? I talked to Alejandro recently. We heard that, we listened to that one because we picked up, we didn't know what, you had such a long list. I know, I know, yeah. So we kind of accidentally, we did the Alejandro one. Yeah, yeah.

We did the John Oliver one. Oh yeah. That was a work of art. That was just a masterpiece. You both were so right on. We can get some good laughs going. Hey, I wanna make a disclaimer, but it's not a disclaimer, it's kind of a caveat.

Yeah. I'll tell you a story that happened one time in many years ago. When I got over my stage fright, kind of early on, I did a gig. I was like, at the time I was on Electro Records and I was going to be a star. Really? Yeah. I didn't really do anything. Yeah. I was gonna be a star, you know? Yeah, I didn't really do anything.

So I was playing this gig in Chicago, and with a really good band, really great thing happening. Full country outfit? Well, it's not country. What was it? Cause my music has always been such a- Yeah, it's interesting.

Yeah, so even back then. It's rock and folk and blues tied up with- Well, now you got Alvin, it's always been such a... Yeah, it's interesting. It comes from a lot of different... Yeah, so even back then. It's rock and folk and blues... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tied up with... Well, now you got Alvin, his folk blues. Yeah. Oh yeah, with Dave, it's like... Yeah, and swing blues, baby.

But we, a writer for the Chicago Tribune, I think it was Greg Cott. It was a long time ago. This is a long time ago, like I'm talking about. But, so he wrote a review of the show, and it really scared me, because it turned out to be a great review. But, the first sentence was, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, a man who never met a digression he didn't like. And first of all, I didn't, I wasn't aware of that until I read it in the paper and I realized it was true.

And then I... What was he basing that on? Because I talk and I go from one thing to another... In between songs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. On stage and in real life too. And I, so I started using that in my show. I started.

Talking that story? Yeah, I tell that story at the beginning because it gives me license. Yeah, as a digression. Yeah, exactly. You'll tell the digression story. It's all the rest of the day. Then every time I digress, it's part of the show. But then later on, the Rolling Stone had a little blurb about me.

And he said, I think it was David Fricke, said, Jimmy Dale Gilmore's train of thought makes all the stops. I told him later the next time I saw him I said no it doesn't make any of them that's the problem. Yeah those are just he just pulls over occasionally. So was that for the where were you getting that that was for spinning around the Sun? Probably yeah yeah because that's when I first heard of you. That's the one, that's probably my main, that's the record that's sold the most of mine.

Well, I just remember like you had all of a sudden, it was like this interesting timing thing, because I imagine that was around the time that Americana and New Country or Alt Country was really kind of beginning to build in the bigger sphere, right? Right. Yeah, you know, so what you had like, you know, Steve Earl and you had it was that whole new generation of These country performers or they were quote-unquote country and then they kind of built that Americana

You know, yeah Label right? Yeah, And then that one came out, and I remember listening to it a lot, and I just re-listened to it again, you know, yesterday, because it was everywhere for a minute, and you were kind of, right? It was like, this guy is, you know, he's doing something different, it's metaphysical,

there's different elements of all different kinds of music in it. But you'd been going for 20 years already. Yeah, it was strange. I was actually in my 40s when I got my first record deal as a solo, not the Flatlanders. Right. Which had been long before. Yeah, and that's interesting to me because there is sort of a moment with with guys

Texans, you know in terms of this of this type of music and lifestyle Where almost all of them they get the record deal and then you know shortly after they're like, I don't give a fuck Well, you know, it's kind of funny. It's like, because to my perception of it, you know, the sort of that circle of people that you sort of, that kind of, because we're not all from the same place, but we're all mostly Texans, but not explicitly. And we kind of had that in common in a way.

The way I perceive it is that the musicians that gravitated, especially to Austin, because Austin had the audience for it and the infrastructure. Austin was a music town before it became noted as a music town. It wasn't the kind of thing where it kind of cultivated that energy. It was like it was really there. And you had a little more freedom there.

And it was, and the people that kind of glommed onto that, you know, they kind of tended more towards the, like, obsession with their art than with success. Right, right. And then there were some of us that were sort of a hybrid of that Yeah, that that and then you know it ended up, you know guy and and and towns Yeah, and Rodney. Yeah in ended up in Nashville, right? Because they had they had more of a that drive than some of the rest of us had well the drive I guess at that point would have been you been, how do I get involved with mainstream country

as a songwriter, mostly, at first, and how do I make a go of it in terms of finding some record success? Exactly, and it's kind of like, it's a deliberate decision on all of this guy's part. Well, it's interesting about- This is where I need to go to really actually make a living as a...

Songwriter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you write the hell out of songs. And that was never your drive. You just kept them to what you do. Yeah.

Well, I had to... You know, there were other fluke things that entered into my life. Movies. Both positive and negative things, you know? Yeah. And for one thing, I already had been very deeply involved in spiritual, I mean, I hate that word kind of. Sure.

The word spiritual. It's become meaningless. Like, you know, but. Buzzword, yeah. Really, for me, it was philosophy. I was already way into philosophy from a young. Like what year, when did that start? Well, I was a reader.

Yeah, when you were a kid. When I was a kid, yeah. So I was steeped in a lot. And I eventually really gravitated. There were a few, Aldous Huxley. Yeah, sure. That's why I did. Well, he did the record Braver New World.

Yeah, yeah, that's why. That's where that came from. And then, and Somerset Mom was a big. I recently saw that wonderful documentary on Steve Martin. Oh yeah. And one place in it, he mentioned that The Razor's Edge, that that book was a big influence on him. It was for me, too.

Yeah. What about it? Well, it was recommended to me by a friend who is one of the smartest people I've known. He's been dead years now, but he's my age and just a brilliant... Even in high school, he was already the most well-read person I've ever met. Yeah.

And what year did you graduate high school? 63. Oh, okay. And he... Max Cheshire was my friend's name. And he, at one point, he had said... He said, I read this book. I'd already read of human bondage.

I read a lot of those British authors and plus I was a science fiction fanatic. Wow. So, yeah. And... So it must have been you and like two other guys. That's sort of like that. Yeah, yeah. There was a little bitty clique of us that were into the same thing. My first wife, JoCarol Pierce, who is brilliant, she died a couple years ago. Well, she was a musician, right?

Yeah. She was on a couple records, no? She put out some records, she got the record of the year in Austin, one year and everything. She never got the note that she deserved. But she's beginning to, people started noticing her after she's gone. But we were readers and we all, and we were just,

we're in Lovok, we were the first little crew that, you know what, what later came to be called hippies. I hate that word too. That's a despicable word to me because it- Puts you in a box. Exactly. It put people in a box whose whole defining characteristic was they weren't in a box.

That's right. All over the country. Right, right. So the little gang of us in Lubbock, that we all managed to find each other. And that group grew. Was Terry Allen there? Oh yeah, Terry was a big part of it.

Well, Terry was a little bit older than me. And Terry's been one of my best friends for 60 years now. Wow. I actually, you know, Terry had forgotten this, but I actually introduced Terry and Guy Clark to each other. Really? At the Kerrville Folk Festival one year. Yeah, I think that Terry, you know,

represents a sort of artistic integrity that must have inspired a lot of you guys. Well, Terry was very important to me. He was a couple of years older than me, same high school. His last record was great. It's wonderful. He also, he, our new record, my new record with Dave Alvin, has a co-write by Dave and Terry and Joe Harvey, Terry's wife.

And he also wrote a song about, who wrote the song about Blind Owl? Dave wrote that. That's, I mean, like, that guy, he deserves his due. Yeah. You know, Blythe L. Wilson is one of these unsung heroes of blues. But, all right, so you're in this crew and basically you're saying that, you know, by the late 60s, everything's breaking apart

and people are finding these new avenues to express themselves and be interested in things. And where does that spirituality take you? Where do you go with that? David Hicks Oh, yeah. I digressed, didn't I? Pete Slauson No, that's just a conversation. David Hicks First of all, this little group of friends, you know, well, several things. There's, we were outcasts in Lubbock. Pete Slauson in Lubbock.

Yeah. You know. Freaks. Yeah, we were freaks. Yeah. And we ended up, there were several crews, Janet and I were talking about, my wife Janet, we were on this drive to LA from Texas. Yeah, we had, and one of the things that came up was that I started reminiscing about this thing about,

I was kind of a part of four or five little groups of people cause I was the musician. Right. I was the musician, it was like kind of a pet that I had. So you had a musician, a writer, like a different type. Well, all these people were musicians and writers and stuff, but I was kind of... There was disparate groups that came to know each other

and kind of blend into one big group. And we some migrate, and we spread it. We migrated to a lot to out here and out to... Joe Carroll and I came and spent time in LA. Yeah. But when our daughter was a new boy, you know, like a year old. What year was that?

65, 60. Oh, OK. So you saw LA in its glory. Oh, it was wonderful. And I spent a lot of time at the Ashgrove. Yeah. Which is a major influence on me. The Ashgrove had the real live people that I had.

It was like a folk club, right? Yeah. And Ed Pearl was the owner. And the people that I had been being influenced, I was steeped in country. Yeah. Real country. From a kid.

Yeah. What were. From a kid. Yeah. What were your folks doing? My dad was a, well, he ended up being a, he got his master's degree in bacteriology at Texas Tech, but he ended up being the superintendent of the creamery at the college. Yeah. It was a state of the art dairy industry thing.

He wasn't a teacher, but he was on the faculty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he, and my mom just worked for, usually for doctors, as like a receptionist, office worker. So not really a cowboy background. No, no. Well, my first six years was actually in Tulia, Texas, which is way in, you know, it's in between Lubbock and Amarillo. My dad was in India when I was born. What? In the war.

Okay, okay. And he was in what was called the Army Air Corps. Yeah. The Army Air Corps. In India. Which conflict was that? World War II. Oh, in India, huh? Yeah.

And so... With the British? He didn't say... Or how did that work? No, no. The Army Air Corps, which later became the Air Force. Yeah. And he was a firefighter in the Army Air Corps, stationed in India, which he was...

He didn't like it. He was this country boy from out in the sticks in Texas. He had... That must have been mind blowing. It was like, and he, I was like over a year old when he first saw me. Came back. Yeah.

And he, and I've lived with his parents. My mom lived with his parents and his younger brothers. They were cowboys. Okay, so that's where you get to Hank Williams all day long? Yeah. Plus my dad was a guitar player. Oh, okay. And he was, there's even this, this is funny because I've done several interviews lately because of the record coming out. And this story has come up several times. I've always loved telling it anyway.

Recently somebody showed me an old newspaper clipping from the Tulia Herald. It was the newspaper. It said, a little bitty ad, a little square aunt said, coming this Saturday night at the VFW hall, the live music, the swingaroos featuring Brian Gilmore and his electric guitar. Wow. He was one of the first. First guys with the electric guitar. What, do you have a telecaster?

Yeah. Yeah. And he, my dad, so my dad. So that's coming out of like the Bob Wills tradition type of thing? More out of Ernest Tubb, and plus Jimmy Rogers. Sure. Well that's my name.

It's from Jimmy Rogers? I'm J-I-M-M-I-E. Yeah. It's not James. It's Jimmy. Jimmy Dale Gilmore is my actual birth.-I-E. Yeah. It's not James. It's Jimmy. Jimmy Dale Gilmore is my actual birth. The singing break man. Yeah.

So that was my dad's childhood. Okay. So Hank comes after that. Hank is like a spinoff of Jimmy Rogers. And then later on also Lefty Frizzell was. And Lefty Frizzell even recorded an outright, a tribute to Jimmy Rogers. Right. Okay. Great. If you don't have it, it's great.

Well, it's funny on that record. And then Merle Haggard. Sure. Oh yeah, he did, yeah. I mean, Merle Haggard was a direct physical vocal descendant of Lefty Frizzell. He sang identically to Lefty Frizzell. Did you know Merle? I met him. I didn't really know him.

Because like your version of I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry. Oh yeah. Like you can hear Hank in your inflection a little bit. It must be in there. Well thank you. You can hear Hank in your inflection a little bit. It must be in there. Well, thank you. Yeah, well, Hank Williams was my first, you know, intensive, and I was a little boy, you know, a little, four or five year old boy, you know, and.

Well, it's interesting about the language of Hank that it was so, the poetry was so simple, but the concepts were so big. The feeling. I know, I know. It's still astonishing to me to look back at his stuff. And then it seems like as you grew intellectually and maybe spiritually, you were able to sort of fill

some of that space that Hank left with a different type of poetry that included your understanding of where you were going spiritually. I think that's a very definite part of the trajectory for me. And it wasn't like I decided to, I'm gonna put this, I'm gonna use this form. It's just that it felt relative. But you're expressing yourself relative that way, yeah.

To what you're evolving into. And because I was a reader, it was all this other stuff too. And it's the 60s. Yeah. Like I said, we came out to LA and our marriage fell apart. We married when we were children. We We were married when we were children. We had a baby when we were children.

And then I have grown grandchildren now. I'm a way better grandfather than I was a father. Yeah, I hear that a lot. Yeah, and I'm a pretty good father now. But I wasn't when I was young. Well, I think that what happens, especially if you have kids young, you still gotta build your own life.

So it's hard not to be selfish. And well, for me, it's hard not to be selfish. Anyway. Always. You know, that, I became a little bit curious in those interviews with you. There's some elements of your way of thought that made me wonder. Because I have, for quite a long time now, been a very intensively practicing Buddhist

with a Tibetan Lama teacher. Oh, yeah? Yeah, with a real kind of student, not expert. You know, not... No one's an expert. And there's something... You made a comment... This is a digression.

This is a good digression. Yeah, sorry. Well, it's actually getting back to where we started with spirituality. It's related to it. You said, I think it was, I believe it was in the John Oliver interview, where you said that you didn't think people were innately good, you thought they were sad. That's Buddhist, that's straight out. And I may wonder if you were saying that sort of

obliquely referring to that or if... You know what I mean? Because that's the core thing, that in Buddhism is the suffering. Pete Slauson Yeah, well, I said another thing, because for me, I didn't grow up with Jesus, I grew up, you know, kind of like, culturally Jewish, so I was never, and I was going to talk about this with another guy later, like, I never knew how, it was never put in me, the use of God. Like, here's your God, this is how you use it, and this is who he is, or or she is or it is. And these are the rules. I never got that. Me too.

Right? So you kind of got to figure shit out for yourself to find peace of mind. But I never was in search of something to identify me, but I'm just doing, I guess it would be spiritual math. You know, because. Yeah, I love that. So, you know, like I said, I'm on stage recently about how a lot of people talk about the authentic self.

And, you know, because the self that you build to engage in the world is self-serving. It's a needy self and it needs definition. But like, if I was my authentic self, I said I would do nothing. It's like what are you doing? I'm my authentic self. There's nothing to do. And that's sort of a Buddhist idea too. Absolutely. Well, you know, through the ins and outs of all this stuff for me, one thing I was also... I think I owe my life probably now to AA for one thing. Yeah, me too, buddy.

And then... 25 years. Then I've got off and on, but I started in 82. Yeah. 82. I've relapsed several times since then. Wow, it was booze, you think? Yeah, well, yes. But it was, well now this is a whole subject.

Well that's a, but it's a similar subject. It's part of it, it's part of it. Because I learned in AA, one of the first things I heard was when somebody said that they were an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. Well, yeah, like all of them, yeah. And I, you know, when I heard that, I went, Yeah. That explains it. That really explains it.

It explained me to me. And then, but then as things unfolded, because I already was real steeped in a bunch of philosophy and stuff. Like which ones? Well, early on, I studied philosophy in college. I never did get a degree, but I studied with a man who had studied under Bertrand Russell. Right.

Okay. So I studied linguistic analysis and symbolic logic. It's like math, dude. It was a man named Dr. Waters. Symbolic logic, I couldn't do it. That wasn't the part of it that I really stuck with. I kind of liked it. I got a grounding in it.

And it also, that set me up to understand computers a lot. I was an early adopter because of fluke. Yeah. But the linguistic analysis part of it stayed with me. And then eventually, I was about to say that the connection there with AA was because I already had, in a sense, too tangled of an intellectual mind to do AA appropriately. Yeah, because your disease was intelligent. It was.

That's exactly right. And then eventually, with AA being a part of it, I became, well, all of it threads together. Interdependence is the Buddhist term. You know? Sure. The idea of powerlessness, and you know, which is the key to it, outside of talking to other alcoholics or other people, but the idea of powerlessness is age old. Absolutely. It's part of the, it's the ancient wisdom. That's right. It's the truth.

And it's very Buddhist. Absolutely. And, you know, later on when I kind of studied some more about Bill Wilson and all the stuff that, and I found out that, you know, Bill himself said, I can't quote this directly, but he said something to the effect of, he said, we only know a little about this. He said, there's some people in the East that know a lot more. Pete Slauson Yeah, right. Dr. Richard Daly Well, that's what… Pete Slauson So, you went to the source. Dr. Richard Daly Well, yeah. And I already had had an interest

in that because philosophy, philosophy means love of wisdom. That's what the term… Academic philosophy has lost it, I think. It's just… Pete Slauson Yeah, I can't read it. Dr. Richard Daly It's just I think. It's just... Yeah, I can't read it. Yeah, yeah. It's just so frustrating. It's just... It's insulated in its language.

Yeah, and it's like it's become like a profession in academia. Yeah, but that's true. But the love of wisdom and the way of the term, that's an ancient part of every spiritual or evolution. Yeah. Of self. Well, it seems to me that what you, you know, that not unlike drugs or not unlike, you know, whatever this quest you are on, that, you know, if it's not a search for God, it's a search for some sort of enlightenment. Whether that's conscious or not,

that there has to be some point to this, other than getting fucked up or just accepting what is, which usually isn't great. So somewhere along the line, you decide that the poetry, which I imagine is what the linguistics kind of opened up for you, right? Yeah, it added to it, a dimension to it.

Yes, that you realize that, well, you know, if country or if music is my thing and this is how I'm going to seek my personal salvation or enlightenment, that I'm gonna run it through these words. Right. And it was, I wish that I had been that deliberate about it. Sure, well yeah, you never are until you look back. It fell together, but so accidentally, the different pieces that.

So you, like, when you were put together, the Flatlanders with Joe and Butch. Butch Hancock, yeah. So you were just, you know, you were just living it. Living the life? Yeah, Joe and I actually had been... Ely, right? Yeah, Joe Ely.

And Butch Hancock, yeah. I had, Butch and I were friends since the seventh grade. Yeah. You know, and it was, it was the type of thing where we were friends at school. Yeah. We lived in different neighborhoods. Yeah. And at that age, you didn't hang out with people that lived far away. Sure.

Because, you know, but we knew each other at school. Yeah. When we got older, and then by the time we you know like had cars yeah like that but you know both discovered that we had been playing we had become musicians yeah without the other one knowing about it. So you started just playing guitar or you had a little band? Because of my dad no no I didn't do bands until... Flatlanders? And there's a great story I'll have to tell you about that, because it's a... Yeah, go ahead.

By the way, part of the backdrop of this conversation is that last night, you know, time change and everything, I had a real hard time sleeping. Yeah. And it's not real unusual, but I spent a lot of time, I had about 500 imaginary conversations with you last night. Oh, yeah. What for this kind of time? Well, this might be one of them.

That's right. Tomorrow, this will be one of them. But it occurred to me, I started thinking, okay, suddenly it seems like I've got this place to talk, you know, what do I want to talk about? Or you know, like what is it? Where are we going to go? Yeah, yeah. And so I imagined everything. But part of the thing was that, well, that interdependence thing is such a bedrock of my way of thinking now because of what I've learned from Mahayana Buddhism.

It was a thing I read early on when I started finding out that the Buddhist, I had studied Vedanta and sort of Hindu and had a guru. You had asked me earlier what happened. I went away from the music business for- What year is that? In the 70s. Okay. I lived in Denver in a spiritual community for- Come on.

Most of the 70s. Really? Yeah. And then, and dedicated. Put down your guitar. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. I did, I still played some music for fun with some other people. There were some great musicians involved in that world. Well, yeah, some of it floats in like, you know,

the record you did with T-Bone. You know, you can hear some little Indian leanings. Yeah. You know? That was a kind of a... Well, there are many things, many funny spin-offs. I actually had, by this weird other fluke, I had become friends with Alan Kinsberg. Sure. And then, and he came in and there's another story that goes with this.

But now I left the other story. Yeah, no, but like, so what you knew Alan and Peter? Yeah. No, no, no, I met him. I didn't know him. And in fact, Alan and I, we spent maybe a couple of hours together about four or five times. It wasn't like we were close friends or anything,

but we had connected. And over basically Buddhism. Sure. He came into that later in life too. Yeah. It was early into my discovering that Buddhism was what I now see as my path. And that was in late 70s. No, no, no, this, that event, the Vedanta part, the Hinduist part was the 70s. When I discovered Buddhism and started discovering that it was different, it had a different, there's a different twist on the understanding. First of all, I discovered that it was real connected to this linguistic analysis stuff that I had studied early on, that Nagarjuna was very similar to Wittgenstein. One of the things that I ran across was one little sentence that said, all phenomena without exception,

which I love, they stuck that little thing, all phenomena without exception have arisen from causes and conditions, which are themselves phenomena that have arisen from causes and conditions from beginningless time. Yeah. Yeah. And that sentence was like, I went, oh shit, this is weird. This is science. Yeah.

It's like a domino effect in your brain. Yeah. Yeah. It was. And it has remained. You can't let that keep going. Yeah. And so then, as I started discovering this idea of interdependence, for me, it was what started putting things together in such a way that, and also this discovery, okay, okay, if I'm this egomaniac that's also has an inferiority complex, what's that made out? What do you do about that war? And the Buddha said, it's because the self

is not a fixed entity. The self is not real. The self is not, and not instantaneously, because now I've been studying it for 20 years. I've been specifically studying that line of thought for many years. But all along the way, like when I first came across those ideas, it was like, whoa. So the Buddha said, there is suffering, there's a cause of suffering. Since there's a cause of suffering, that cause can be removed. So there's an, there is an end of suffering. And I've discovered a way that produces the end of that suffering. And then that's, so those are called the Four Noble Truths.

Yes. Okay, so, and the fourth one has eight parts though, because of the path. So is one of those ways music? Well, no, no, it's all these ways go together. Although music, because from another angle, because I obviously oddly got off into syphism because of another, well, they're all parallel. Sure, yeah.

I ended up teaching a class once a year at the Omega Institute in upstate New York. By the way, this is funny, this is another odd thing here. That came about as a result of an interview with Terry Gross. Oh yeah. On Fresh Air.

Sure. Probably when spinning around the sun. Yeah. It was. Yeah. And then I was invited to Omega and I've been since, no, 94, I think was, might have been 96.

Okay, yeah. That was- Braver New World. That I started this class one week and then a week we later on tacked on a thing called advanced, it was just songwriting yeah, we deal you more in which I do not teach it I curate a situation where the class teaches

Yeah songwriting sure to each other Do you have a sense it turned out to be the most wonderful my favorite thing that has happened in my music career What is that class Was that class? Is that class. Why? Yeah, and it's still, because of it forced me to like sort of articulate all the musical stuff. Your process.

That was going on. Yeah. And year after year, and it's an ever-growing, ever-evolving thing, you know. And also a community has grown out of that. You know, some people do the class repeatedly year after year, but- What's the structure of it? How does it work?

By collaboration. Like I put, generally, like three people together. We try to fix it so that there are people that either that haven't done it together before and from the start of the week, because it ends up being like communications theory. Yeah. Well, this is what I learned from the class.

Yeah. Yeah. You ask what's important about it to me. What I finally, I finally realized that there was a punch line to what I was conveying, what I was, and it's this. First of all, that music is communication. It's a form of communication. Right.

Communication is community. Yeah. Community is based on love. That's what, that music is, music is a language, a form of communication that can go to places that words can't, that really nothing else can. Right.

And not even psychedelics, you know? Psychedelic can do things. But then it goes away. Yeah. Music stays. Yeah. Music is something that, you know, that old thing about music being the universal language and all that, you know, cliches that are cliches because they're true. Yeah.

Yeah. And one night in my, the Omega Institute was actually originally instituted by Sufi students, students of Pir Valiot Khan. And Pir Valiot Khan's father was Hazrat Anayat Khan. And he wrote lots and lots and lots about music and spirituality. And at one point, there's a quote in one of his books, I don't know if I can say it word for word, but he said, in the future, and this is like over a hundred years ago that he wrote this, it's just like in the 19 teens or something. He said, in the future, music and the philosophy of music will be the religion of the world. Hmm. And at some point I went, we're in the future. You know, I started noticing, oddly enough, one night after that was pointed out to me and one of the students in the class told me this quote.

I had read Hasroth and Iaccon, but I didn't remember that, you know? Yeah. But later on that week, I was on tour after the class. Yeah. You know, it was like somewhere in Woodstock, I think, or someplace. And there was a TV show and an old footage of one of Willie Nelson's Fourth of July picnics was on. Yeah, yeah, from the 70s? Yes, and it was old footage, but I was looking at it

and all of a sudden I went, wow, look at that. This vast throng of people all together, all pulsating with this mute, with this, and then I started thinking Elvis, The Beatles. Sure. You know, that this. Yeah. It was actually, it just seemed to me like, like now I don't, music can also be used for nefarious purposes, you know? Sure.

Anything can. Every church has music. Sure. So does every army. Right. Yeah, yeah. It's... Yeah, different types of music, marching music.

Music, but it's because music has this power to get people to cooperate with each other. Or to commune with each other. Commune with each other outside of who they are as individuals. Right, exactly. So in that moment, did that bring a different purpose to your music? Well, no, it was that I realized that I had intuitively understood that without articulating it. Yeah. That's, like I said, the class, what the class has been valuable about was making me see

on a conscious level, things that were... I think I knew... I think I was gonna be a musician no matter what, even though I became interested in all kinds of other subjects. But you were always a musician, right? Yeah, I don't think I ever really... I decided that, I think I decided that there maybe was some conflict between spirituality and music.

That's why I went away during that. But wasn't that also had to do with your lifestyle? Oh, it all kind of, there was many things. Yeah. And my life was falling apart. Right. Because I was drunk, because I was self, self, you know, the total self-centeredness. Yeah, you needed a life raft.

Was killing, you know, and like... And you couldn't stop it. And not having any control over it, not having any... So several factors added together, you know, several things collided. And so, I have a question for you. How did it happen with you? Well, you know, there is that moment where you know you're going to die, and you know you might not want to. And you know part...

You might, but you might not. But if you're living a certain life that's gonna kill you, that seems like something you might want to remove, you know, and that there's gotta be more than the cycle of self-centered behavior that is causing all this problem. And if you can't figure out how to stop it on your own, you know, you need help. And you don't know how that help is gonna come. For me, it happened to come in a very beautiful woman

who saw that I was in trouble, and she got me into the secret society. Yeah. So, you know, but over time, you know, you learn how to sort of, you know, understand, you know, the nature, the three-pronged nature of that particular illness and that you can see that there is a structure there

that can begin to alleviate that. So for me, I just felt like if I continued what I was doing with cocaine and booze, that I was going to die an asshole who was committed to something stupid. Yeah. Right? You know, my life wasn't huge, but it was big enough to sort of to see that. But you know, and I was always a comic and you know, the magic of comedy is limited in a way that music isn't.

And you know, I play music, but you know, I never had the confidence to to sort of pursue it. But what's interesting to me is that, you know, all this stuff is going on with you spiritually and intellectually, but the constant that seems to remain is the music. Yeah, I want to add something here. A personal, you know, I'm so full of opinions. And one of my opinions is that you shouldn't have any opinions. Sure. And that creates friction, you know. Sure. But I personally believe that humor, that comedy, is the highest and most difficult

art form. I think it's above music. But I can understand that in terms of being immediately able to bring relief and change the way people think, I think comedy is powerful. But I've always thought that music, even like how you're talking about music, that it exists in a timeless zone.

Some old jokes survive, but most of them don't. So it's relative to a moment or a moment of time. Whereas you have some music that will just sort of continue to sort of move through time and space, you know, without it being hinged to it. I agree with that, but I don't think that's the most important thing about it. I think it's the immediacy of it. That's an important factor that it can have some life, some long life, but it's what it does now that actually- I think, okay, I understand that and I agree with that, but for me to be able to listen

to the Flatlanders from 1972 on some live tapes that you unearthed somewhere and then to sort of listen to Spinning Around the Sun again and then to listen to you and Dave Alvin on your last two records that those things always sort of exist and because of the nature of the music, you tap right into them and they become immediate, where no matter when you listen to it. Whereas if I listen to an old Steve Martin album, I'm going to be like, well, I know this joke or I know this thing. I remember when he did this. So it hinges itself because comedy is an equation where music is something more untethered and lyrical that just moves through time. Whereas comedy, it's like, well, that's a good joke.

Whereas a song, you can experience emotions, you can experience the narrative of the song, if it has one, and you can experience that in different ways throughout your entire life with one song. One song will grow with you. Anytime you go back to it, you're like, I didn't hear that part of that song, or that turn, I didn't understand that

back when I first listened to it, or it means something different to me now. Whereas a joke, it's like, that was a good joke. I think you are making a very good point that I think- Music grows with you. But you still got Mark Twain. Sure. If you-

It's still there, you know? Yeah, but still, that's a way, like, you sort of, like, you know, like if you know Mark Twain and there's something happening in the world we live in now and you can say, well, Mark Twain used to say, and then you can get a little bit of a funny, you know, kind of like, holy shit, it was, you know, he knew that then or, you know,

that applies now or whatever. Whereas music's magic is sort of like, you know, oh, you gotta listen to that song again. And then it's up to the listener. You know, the, you got to listen to that song again. And then it's up to the listener. You know, the joke is intellectual exercise. It's true. And actually, these aren't...

It's actually... There's not really a dichotomy here. There's actually a... It's like, this is making me think about an aspect of this I haven't thought about before. That's laughter. When you experience real laughter, I think that's the greatest, maybe the greatest human experience. Yeah, because it expresses so much.

It doesn't happen very often. That's right. But when something is truly, when it really hits that spot, I think that's just transcendent. I think it's a human trait. Sure, it's great. It's great. But like the depth of emotion and reaction to music is a little different because- Yeah, you're right.

Because like, you know, laughter,, I mean a fart can be funny. But the depth of that, I don't know what that is. There's a lot of different reasons to laugh. But I think that music's ability to carry you through whatever's going on in your life or to provide relief or insight or even experience a deeper emotional possibility of what's happening with you now,

even from like an old song, like even if they're like ghosts, you listen to, like even the way you covered, you know, I'm so lonesome I could cry. That if you listen to Hank's version of that, the darkness and the sort of tightrope he's on to sort of elevate that type of existential loneliness and make it understood to everybody in that deep way.

And then you covered it for a reason because you wanted to interpret it through your own lens of the same type of thing and that thing just grows and grows again. I don't think a fart joke is gonna do that. Well you know I think we might be on to something here. I think there might be a you, this amalgamation of it. It's not an either or. That's it. It's not an either or.

Yeah, but even though I think a few minutes ago, I was thinking it was. And it's not. And it's, boy, I hope we have a transcript. I like this. I want to go back over this. And it's, boy, I hope we have a transcript. I like this. I wanna go back over this. Well, I've been a guy who plays guitar my whole life, you know, and I made a decision at some point

out of fear or insecurity, you know, not to pursue that. But I, you know, I play and, you know, and I played with Dave when he was on the show. And, you know, I understand, you know, what music does for me, but I used to do a joke about it. I used to say like, because I never pursued music as a dream or as a life, I have guitars and I can enjoy them.

They're not sort of broken dream vessels. They don't represent some failure to me. They represent a means for me to have a meditative experience on my own. Yeah. I used to say, by the way, I don't know if you were familiar with Jesse Taylor, that he was the guitar player in the Eley band. He had actually had been in my earlier band. There was a point when he was really grilling me one time about my getting so involved with meditation

and the philosophy, you know, all kinds of that. And finally, at one point, I said to him, And finally at one point I said to him, music used to be the way for me to get into this sort of... Meditative state? Yeah, this transcendent, this preferable state. Yeah. It was preferable. Right. this preferable state, this preferable, it was, and I said, after being a little bit

kind of steeped in the actual practice of meditation and of kind of understanding that from another way, it came to be that music became not the vehicle to get to it, but the vehicle to express it. It turned around backwards for me. Right. So, once you gave yourself over to a spiritual practice or meditative practice and a spiritual philosophy or whatever you want to call it, that there was a separation between what meditation is and means as opposed to just you using music not unlike one would use alcohol or anything else just to get out of yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Then the music becomes informed by you being grounded in a true practice And then it kind of you incorporate it Yes, and it becomes a more expressive to know it's like and I don't know. I don't know if I ever would have This is hard to say you know lots of times when you start talking about things you start then Sticking meanings on to them that weren't there. You know, lots of times when you start talking about things, you start then sticking meanings onto them that weren't there. You know? Well, yeah.

You have to look at it. But the meaning, though, you can at least assess what you think you were trying to do. Yeah, yeah, right. And examining, you know, there's this wonderful writing by David White. And he has a thing about the conversational nature of reality. I thought about this last night because we'd been listening to you.

I understand why he's a master of conversation. Yeah. And the conversation, I, after reading this poem by David White, this essay, I guess you'd say, but conversation is, okay, converse. Okay. Con is with, verse is word, verbal. So in real conversation, both parties are like open to the other. Yeah, creating something new.

Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. And then the idea of the conversational nature of reality. Right. It's like, it's just so beautiful. This is just a beautiful way of thinking of that word. You know, of that. It should define humanity. It should.

It should. Yeah, but now we've got phones that we can talk to. And we've also got, it's almost like modern times, I think it's sort of like Babylon. Yeah, well, yeah. It's like this. Or Sodom. The fragmented, both. It's like all of them, all at once.

The fragmentation of language. I think about that at the Tower of Babel a lot, where the languages become unto themselves separating influence of people communicating. Exactly. And everything breaks apart. It becomes the opposite of communication. Language is definitely a double-edged sword.

Sure. But music too, with all these guys that you've played with over the years, that's an ongoing conversation. Oh, for sure. Music is really conversation. So it makes sense that it's where you live in that way in terms of expression. I imagine your evolution as a musician from working with these guys with Joe Ely and the

Flatlanders and kind of moving through different iterations of how you approach it and then coming on, spinning around the sun and into a braver new world that you kind of realize it seems like who you are musically at that moment and you're working with these great people. And then here as you get older, you lock in with old Dave and it seems like you guys are just sort of like, let's just get at it. Yeah, it is.

It's an, that's a very strange dynamic that, Dave and I have been friends for a way long time. Yeah. But we didn't, it's almost as if we thought, I guess I speak for him too, but almost as if we thought we couldn't really play music together because we're just too different. Doing something different, right. It's just too, and then when we did the little tour, a year long tour of just the two of us.

Yeah. We had the little tour, a year long tour of just the two of us. We almost immediately discovered that we had this, oh, the Ashgrove. I mentioned the Ashgrove earlier. That we, Dave had been hanging out at the Ashgrove at the same time that I was. Yeah, and who was on stage at that time? Well, lots of people. Lightning Hopkins was who I became friends with because of the Ashgrove. Texas. And Sun House.

And I never saw Lightning in Texas. It's the weirdest thing. I got to know him in LA. Yeah. Did you see the Winter Brothers in Texas? Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I saw Johnny Winter when he opened for, I think it was, it was not Palisade John, it was the Conqueror, I think, at the Balkan Gas Company in Austin. That was when he got written up in the Rolling Stone. That's like kicked off. He was just opening the show. His solo career. Yeah. Or was he with a band?

No, no, he was solo. He's total. Yeah, with the Doverow? Yeah. Going at it? And he was a knockout. But the connection with all that blue... With Lighten and the Ashcroft. That stuff happened here in the late... I knew it from records before, but actually...

So you had a source point with Dave. Well, it turned out that we had all kinds of repertoire in common with each other already. We didn't have to... And see, that's what I'm telling you about the difference between a joke and a song, is that you guys can land on like, why don't we cover that song? Because that song meant something to us. So let's own it. You know, and let's, and let's, and let's do our business with it. That's true. That's an interesting thing. It's true. It's like, cause you guys did some Dylan songs. Kind of gives

you a, a container that you can keep it, that you can kind of hold the water in. Yeah. But also, you know, invest yourself in it, and, you know, and make it your own to a certain degree. Yeah, because you always can't, in fact, you have it, you can't ever really duplicate it. I just think it's interesting with you and Dave, because like, you know, those records, like you know, when you do some of your records,

you know, you're kind of pulling on a lot of different things, you know, you're integrating of pulling on a lot of different things. You're integrating a fourth and a fifth chord. And Dave is kind of a three chord guy. Yeah. You know? Right. And so you got to kind of bring it back to that and own what you do. And then you write these songs like that song about the last stripper.

Yeah. I mean like- That's Terry and Dave. That's Terry? That's the one stripper. Yeah. I mean like. That's Terry and Dave. That's Terry. That's the one Terry did with Dave. Because like that song is like such an interesting interpretation of a sort of classic country trope that I don't think you could be as honest about at another time.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. You know, death and heartbreak and dying alone and hard times, but to be as specific as that song is, with such a loving tone, it's like that great George Jones song, He Stopped Loving Her Today, where you, a note, you know, or a phone number, and it kind of pulls together a whole life in their absence. And it's a type of a country kind of a trope that, you know, it's completely redone in that song. You know what I mean? I've had this ongoing joke about that song. We started performing it right after we learned it,

like last year. And it was funny because people would laugh. And so I came up with this, an introduction, to where I'd say, I've known Terry for very long time. I mean, he's been a big part of my Terry for a very long time. I mean, he's been a big part of my life for a very long time. And I said, I think that this is the first song

of Terry's that wasn't sarcastic. And then I told Terry that when I saw it, we saw him do a gig at the Paramount in Austin a few months ago. And I told Terry that and Terry said, Jimmy, everything I've ever done is sarcastic. But like I love the new record, I love the old records, it's great talking to you. I think we did all right. You too, thank you. I feel like I've discovered a new little treasure trove.

We like to listen to lots of podcasts and I'm looking forward to hearing all these conversations you've had, especially with people that I know. Sure. 1600 of them or so. And I did not know. I don't know how I missed it. I guess I can be pretty oblivious. Dude, there's a lot going on, man.

I don't know anything that's going on out there. The fact of the matter is because of the nature of technology, you're never too late for the party and everything is still discoverable. Too much of everything. I just learned that you played a song with Mudhoney today. Oh, yeah. And I love Mudhoney. It's so funny because it's like it's totally a Jimmy song until that guitar comes in and you're like oh there's Mudhoney.

Good talking to you man. Yeah you too. There you go again again the album. Tex Akali is out now and he's touring with Dave Alvin this summer. Go to JimmyGilmore.com to find out more and stick around for a minute for something else about Dave Alvin. Hey folks, I don't know if you know about this house that I live in now, but one of the reasons I bought it was that the garage had been converted into a room. There was a bathroom put in, there was drywall put on the other side of the door, and basically

it was no longer a garage, it was a room. And I thought, oh, well this is amazing, I'll do my podcast in here. And honestly, aside from using it as a place to do the podcast, this is now a perfect space to host on Airbnb. Now do a little thought experiment for yourself. Think about where you live. Got extra bedrooms, a guest house, maybe your old house is just very comfortable even when you're not home. While you're away your home could be on Airbnb. It's easy to do and it's a great way to earn some extra cash. Maybe you can cover the cost

of your summer vacation or fix that other part of the house that you've been putting off. There's extra money just sitting there. All you gotta do is Airbnb it. Don't take my word for it, check it out. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host.

This Friday. you ready? Okay, let's go. The hunt for the wildest movie of the summer. Everybody run! Ends here. This is your super friendly and non-aggressive reminder to buy tickets immediately. Borderlands Friday. So, speaking of Dave Alvin, you can listen to my 2012 interview with Dave if you have

a WTF Plus subscription. It's episode 321 and I played with Dave at the end of the episode on the song Help You Dream. You want to play a song, will you? Sure, if you'll sing it. I don't know how to sing. What are you talking about? I heard you sing one of my songs in San Francisco.

I did, but I'd have to look up the words. Oh, we could sing it to look up the words. Oh, we could sing it together. All right. What key did you do it in? I think I did it in like an open, like an E or something. An E?

Oh, now I'm nervous. I don't know how to fucking sing. What's the worst that can happen? I fuck up your song. You sing along, did you learn it off the record? I, like, what I did was, like, I just loved the song. Yeah. And, you know, I just, you know, kinda made it my own. just loved the song yeah and you know I you know I

just you know kind of you know made it my own I didn't try to you know cuz I you know I learned the chords and you know I just I did what I could I can't do it that fast no yeah you do your song I don't know how to do it I on the blasters you got it beautiful well is this seat taken would you mind some company been alone all evening would you like to talk with me? Now do I come here often? Well you might say that I do And is someone home waiting?

Honey I was just gonna ask you Cause you're the prettiest woman I think I've ever seen. Tonight, if you let me, I'd like to help you dream. Again, that's episode 321. It's available for WTF subscribers. To sign up, go to the link in the episode description or go to WTF pod.com and click

on WTF plus. Also this show is sponsored by BetterHelp online therapy. It's hard to make time for the things that keep you healthy, but being consistent with self care is like working a muscle. And when life gets crazy, that muscle keeps you strong. Therapy is the ultimate self-care, and BetterHelp makes it easy to get started. With affordable online sessions, you can do from anywhere. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp.

Learn more at BetterHelp.com. That's BetterH-E-L-P dot com. And a little reminder, before we go here, this podcast is hosted by Acast. Here's some guitar I just did. I'm gonna be a good boy. I'm gonna be a man. So Boomer lives! Monkey in the Fonda! Cat angels everywhere!