WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1597 - Dwight Yoakam

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Dwight Yoakam is a multi-platinum recording artist with many number one albums and singles, as well as multiple Grammy wins. But despite all his accomplishments as a musician, including his new album Brighter Days, Dwight is just as comfortable being a music historian. Dwight helps Marc chart the movement of country music to California, with Americana music of the mid-20th Century blending with rock and punk to create a unique sound that Dwight was a distinct part of. They talk all about The Byrds, Creedence, The Blasters and many more, in addition to Dwight’s new adventures as a first-time dad. 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.

There's so much about Canada's history that you probably don't know, like the fact that Nunavut was the brainchild of seven Inuit men on a road trip, or that the U.S. is collateral damage from our experiment. Welcome to Season 3 of Canadian Time Machine, a podcast that unpacks milestones and sometimes uncomfortable truths in our country's history. Your perceptions of this country will change. Your sense of identity might change too. Listen now to Canadian Time Machine. Are you sure you parked over here? Do you see it anywhere? I think it's back this way. Come on. Hey, you're going the wrong way. Feeling distracted? You're not alone. Whether

renting, considering buying a home, or renewing a mortgage, many Canadians are finding it hard to focus with housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances, and clear your head, visit Canada.ca slash it pays to know. A message from the Government of Canada. Alright, let's do this. How are you? What the fuckers? What the fuck buddies?

What the fuck, Nick? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. Looks like I don't know what happens every year. I guess it's an end of the year thing, but I get these little sort of message requests

and DM sort of things from random people, fans, showing me the listings of their ranked favorite podcasts. And we're still up there there at least for some people which is nice it's a long time we've been doing this a long time I don't even know how many I just know it's a lot and we keep churning them out for you for your enjoyment every Monday and Thursday. A new show for you. And we're doing even more stuff, for bonus stuff on the A-Cast there. It's a lot of talking for a lot of years

to a lot of different people and just out of my own brain. And today on the show, I talked to Dwight Yoakam. Now, most people know who Dwight Yoakam. Now most people know who Dwight Yoakam is. He's a singer-songwriter, an actor, but he also turns out to be quite the music historian and raconteur. He's had multiple number one albums and number one singles, multiple Grammy wins. He's also an actor who's been in movies like Swingblade, Panic Room, Logan Lucky. We talked about none of those,

but he's got a new album out called Brighter Days. And I never know, you know, sometimes, you know, people come around and I have opportunities to talk to them and if I have interest, I'll talk to them. But you know, when you're dealing with a musician, a lot of times guys have been around a long time and maybe they were part of other musical outfits, musical bands, whatever. They're still working away. All this to say that Dwight's new record, I listened to it and right out of the gate I was like, holy fuck.

Every song on there is a banger, as they say, just really fully realized, songwriting is good, the guitar sound is great, the band is great, it's called Brighter Days. And I was so excited to just turn that record on, or listen to it on my phone, and just be like, holy fuck, he's really still doing it. So it was a pleasure to talk to him. And it wasn't, you know, usually I can sort of find a way in through the new work, but

with Dwight, this dude likes to talk. This is one of those rare episodes where I had to interject just to make sure I was still in the fucking room Because it was very engaging. There was a lot of stuff kind of a lot of things I didn't know he's very sort of involved in sort of Really kind of exploring and validating the California country

scene and sound, it was a great conversation. Then later in the conversation, we got to talking about Credence, and actually after the talk, we sat on my couch in my house and listened to a Cosmos factory on my fancy system. I don't know what I'm thinking. I mean, he's Dwight Yoakam.

He spends his life in a studio and in music, and I'm like, oh mean, he's Dwight Yocum. He spends his life in a studio and in music. And I'm like, Oh, you got to hear my speakers. You got to hear my speakers, man. And we listened to up around the bend. Great guy. Good conversation. Also Brian Jones, the mug maker, the Potter still has some cat mugs for sale that you can get at WTFmugs.co.

These are the mugs I give to my guests, hand made by Brian Jones. Get them as gifts for WTF fans in your life or as a treat for yourself. Again, that's at WTFMugs.co. Let's run down some dates. I'm back at Largo in LA on Friday, December 13th for a comedy and music show me and the band Sacramento California Crest Theatre Friday January 10th Napa California at the Uptown Theatre on Saturday January 11th I'm in Fort Collins Colorado at Lincoln Center Performance Hall on Friday January 17th then Boulder Colorado at Boulder Theatre on Saturday January 18th I'll be in Santa Barbara California at the

Lobero Theatre on Thursday January 30th then San Luis be in Santa Barbara, California, at the Lobero Theater on Thursday, January 30th, then San Luis Obispo, California, at the Fremont Center on Friday, January 31st, Monterey, California, at the Golden State Theater on Saturday, February 1st. You can go to wtfpod.com for all my dates and tickets, and there's a lot of other stuff coming up. I mean, I'm going to be, I mean, I'm going out there to some interesting markets that I didn't do with this hour yet.

I mean, I'm going to like Iowa city, Des Moines, Kansas city, Asheville, North Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee, Louisville, Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, Oklahoma city, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Durham, Charlotte, Charleston, Skokie, Joliet, I'll be in Grand Rapids, I'll be at the Traverse City Comedy Festival, I believe, in April. And this is all moving towards a special taping that it looks like we're gonna do in May

here in New York City. I won't announce exactly, we're still working out the details on that, but I did go check out a venue. So that's all, that's what we're converging on. Like as you remember, I was doing this new hour and then I got kind of sidelined by the TV gigs and the movie gig.

And now I'm back at it, picking up places that hasn't seen this work. And certainly it's different than when I was doing, whenever I started doing it, but the point we're moving towards is another HBO special. And that'll be it. That'll be it. There comes a point when it's like, well, that's what I think.

I don't know why I put this on myself, why I think that way. I mean, I am old, I think. You know, I don't know why I put this on myself, why I think that way. I mean, I am old, I've done all right. I'm happy about where I'm at and what I've achieved. And there's some part of me that thinks like, you know, what do I gotta keep going for? You know, I've never been really a money guy. Turned out I did all right.

I don't know why I'm talking in the past tense here, but I think about it a lot. You know, my audience is getting older with me and I don't know what the future holds, but I know this is what is happening. Next year is gonna be a busy year. There's a lot of things going on. A lot of changes are happening in the world

and perhaps in myself. So we'll see. I don't know. I don't know why I bother thinking about this. Why can't I just be in the present in this room? Huh? Why do I choose my head and projections and my phone and speculation and distractions over just sitting with me?

Huh? Come on. What is it? and speculation and distractions over just sitting with me. Huh? Come on. What is it? I'm gonna play at a show tonight here in New York. It's a sort of, I don't know how this works, but it's gonna be one of these music comedy shows that I do, like the ones I do at Largo. And I just, I should be thrilled.

And I am to a degree, but I wanna do a good job. It's gonna be me and Favino, Matty Weiner's gonna do a set, and Namesh Patel's gonna do a set, and I'm gonna do some comedy. We're gonna do about, I guess, four songs, me and Jimmy and his guys. You know, Adam Menkoff on bass, who's a genius,

Sean Pelton, the great drummer. And so we're gonna do, I think we're gonna do Steppin' Out, and then we're gonna do Goin' Goin' Gone, the Dylan song, then we're gonna do What Goes On, the Velvet Underground song, then Jimmy wants to do Run Run Rudolph. And then Kingfish is coming out. He's gonna do a couple, The Thrill is Gone and Hey Joe,

and then we're all gonna play Killing Four, the Howlin' Wolf song, and it's gonna be in a room with like 150 people. It's like this small event space, and it's mostly invitation only, but yeah, it's gonna be pretty exciting. There was a point there where they showed me the lineup, and they put Kingfish in the middle

and I was like, why would I even play after Kingfish? I'm trying to get by on the guitar here and do a little singing. You can put Kingfish in the middle of the show. What's the point of even picking up a guitar after that? So now he's going to close big. But I'm nervous. I'm excited. I want it to be a good time.

I'd like my brain to be able to just think, hey, this will be a good time, not, oh, fuck, man, I hope I nail this. Jesus, I hope I nail, what's wrong with my brain? Well, good question. And this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. It's starting to get cold out there in parts of the country, and when it gets cold, I'm sure you have your go-to ways to stay warm

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to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash WTF. So podcasts, so filling your head. So what about reading? I guess if you were listening at the beginning here, I brought that up. I was talking, you know, I come to New York not so much these days. And I went out last night with my buddy,

the brilliant novelist, Sam Lipsight, my dear friend Sam. And he was doing a part in a reading. He was part of a group that was, uh, reading pieces from a book, uh, a collection by Mark Lainer. Now, Mark Lainer is one of the great satirists, one of the great envelope pushers of language and ideas. He, got this new book out, A Shimmering Serrated Monster. It's like it's the Mark Lainer reader. My buddy Sam wrote the introduction. But you know, Lainer's done some amazing books. My cousin, my

gastroenterologist, Et tu, babe is a great book. orgy of the Divine hermit sugar-frosted nutsack which is a novel I don't know like I I just think that if you read them you're gonna get a fucking kick out of them because he's just you know he's he's he's hardcore raw transgressive you, transgressive, you know, envelope pushing satire, you know, both in ideas and language. And the thing was, is like, we do this thing. And there was, you know, it was a nicely attended event, friends, family, other writers read from the book and we all went out and I talked to Lainer a bit.

I hadn't talked to him in a long time. I interviewed him years ago on Air America because I always like Etubhabe was sort of a mind blowing book for me. But this is one of the great writers and I got talking to Sam and a publisher who was there just about, you know, how do you get people's attention to focus on books? How do you get them to focus on anything when there's so much around? And then I believe maybe the public said the, you know, that people are listening to podcasts more than they're reading books.

And I thought to myself, Oh, fuck, I guess, uh, I guess I'm partially to blame for that, but I guess this is just a pitch. You know, read a book. Will you read a Mark Lainer book? Read a Sam Lipsight book. Pick up a book. I'll do it if you do it What do you say deal? All right, look Dwight Yoakam is

Here and we had a great conversation. I enjoyed it immensely He he just released his first album of new music in nine years It's called brighter days and you can get it wherever you get your music and it's a great record. This is me talking to Dwight Yoakam. I used to say I just feel stuck. Stuck where I don't want to be. Stuck trying to get to where I really need to be. But then I discovered lifelong learning. Learning that gave me the skills to move up, move beyond, gain that edge, drive my curiosity, prepare me for what is inevitably next. The University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. Lifelong learning to stay forever unstuck.

Whether renting, renewing a mortgage or considering buying a home, everybody has housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances, visit Canada.ca slash it pays to know. A message from the Government of Canada. I've lived here a while. I'm from New Mexico, Jersey genetically, but I grew up in New Mexico. Grew up out in New Mexico. Did your family move out there when you were a kid?

Yeah, you know, I was there. They were at the university or? No, my dad was in the Air Force in Alaska. Oh, see. In Anchorage. And then when he got out, he, you know, he's a doc. So he started, you know, it was a kind of a boom town and a buddy of his had moved to Albuquerque. Wow. So I moved there. I was about third grade through high school. Wow.

Were you in Alaska before that? Yeah, two years. That's wild. In Anchorage. Yeah. That's insane. What was that? I mean, you were probably six, seven years old. That's right. But you know, you have memories. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Six or seven. That's. Yeah, it's insane. What was that like? I mean, you were probably six, seven years old. That's right. But you know, you have memories. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Six or seven, that's a big imprint. Well, you feel the weight of that sky up there. You know, I feel like you get closer to the top of the world. You can kind of feel it.

Oh, no, the curve, yeah. And I feel, you know. Northern lights, all of it. There was that. But I remember mostly, there was a huge earthquake in 63. And a big tsunami that hit up there, right? I don't know when that it was, there was a huge earthquake in 63. And the big tsunami that hit up there, right? And I don't know when that happened, but there was a massive earthquake. In the late fifties.

Yeah. And they hadn't quite, you know, pulled it all together. You walk out, we could walk out to the inlet. And if you walked along the inlet, you get to the, where it hits the sea. And I just remember those ice flows, just, you know, just chunks of ice. Wow. This is Anchorage? Yeah.

Anchorage. Wow. I remember a few things. You ever go to Fairbanks? I went to Fairbanks to do a show as a grown-up. And it's interesting when you fly into Alaska because you're like, holy fuck, there's nothing up here. No, there's nothing.

I've never been to Alaska. I've been to the Northwest Territory of Canada, which is also, there's no roads. Yeah. The roads stop. When you get in Northern Alberta, there's a dirt road and then there's no road. It's like, yeah, tundra.

Yeah, it's going like, I've done shows in Winnipeg, and you fly into Winnipeg, you're like, what the fuck, there's nothing out here. I've got a shot of the exterior temperature, I forget what it was, what amount below one day when we were touring up and we were in Winnipeg. But I'm fascinated with Alaska, you know, in terms of just the-

Never been, though. The edge of the earth, never been there, someday. It's the closest- They've offered shows, it just didn't work out, you know, in the moment. Where would you go, Fairbanks, Anchorage, or Juneau? I mean, what are the options? Well, usually Anchorage is where it's been, you know, like, I have no concept of what

it's like now. It's pretty small. Fairbanks. As a kid, I mean, I was infatuated with, uh, Johnny Horton. I don't know if you know what my first hit ever was a remake of a Johnny Horton song, Honky Tonk Man. Yeah. But Johnny Horton wrote these great historical,

he was either taught history, he was a history major in college or whatever. Johnny Horton wrote the theme song to a movie that John Wayne did, North to Alaska. Okay. Big Sam left Seattle in the year of 92 with George Fratty's partner partner and he would do this yodel break and his brother Billy too, they crossed the Yukon River, found the bananas of gold

about the whole Yukon for all the gold rush in Alaska beneath that old white mountain just a little Southeast. Yeah. Yeah. So I started listening to this and then when I was older, I became infatuated with maps. We had my dad decided he, and he was a master mechanic, not an education, you know, not a academic in any way. Cars? Yep.

And, uh, but he had been in the army. He was a, had a half a career done like 10 years right at, was a sergeant in the army. I came a half a career done like 10 years right at. He was a sergeant in the Army. I came along, he used to blame me for getting out of the Army, but I'd say, he goes, you know, I oughta been retired by now, he'd look at me. Hadn't been, cause like you, cause he couldn't take

my mother and myself to Korea, even though the war was still, it was still, to this day, the Korean War is not officially over, it's a truce. That's why the DMZ up there is. So like mid-late 50s? I was born in 56, so by 57. The act of war had stopped at the end of 53, early 54. You don't hear about it much, it's a pretty bloody mess.

Oh, it was a nightmare. John Prine wrote a great song called Hello in There. Oh yeah, it's the best. You've heard that? Oh yeah, of course. Then the guy on the bench talking about, we lost, I forget the son's name, in the Korean War, we still don't know what for.

Because that was the beginning of wars that had no meaning. Sure, yeah, yeah. No end. And then the next was, that had no meaning. Sure. Right. Yeah. No end. Yeah. And, uh, and then the next was of course, Vietnam. Yeah. The precursor was Korea. Yeah.

And so my dad ended up there. He met my mom. Thank God. As otherwise there's no me. Yeah. Met my mother. Where in Kentucky? No.

And by that point in Ohio, because funny enough, politics aside, uh, uh, JD Vance wrote a book called hillbilly eulogy that, uh, he, he flattered me by using a song that I wrote called read and write and route 23 about the cultural exchange that happened post world war two. It was happening before that, but really, uh,

when the coal mines began shutting down in Southeast Kentucky, Kentucky, West Virginia, deep southern Virginia and western Virginia, and they were mined out a lot of places though they didn't have work. Your mom comes from? Coal mining down the hills. I was born there. Her folks?

Yeah, oh yeah, generations back. Coal mines. Hundreds of years. Lumber before that. And my dad's side, actually my great grandfather came out of Shenandoah Valley of Virginia into the Ohio Valley. But that river valley spawned,

the Ohio River Valley, next to the Mississippi and the Missouri, it's one of the largest rivers in North America. And it really spawned a lot of culture. Cincinnati, the river towns that were there of industry. So I was at church one day and this fellow who was also a Kentuckian, I used to say we ran out of gas and didn't make it to Detroit where Iggy, who I'm sitting on is from, the cats up in Detroit, there were all these transplanted hillbillies.

They were calling, and there was huge country music out of Detroit, and my original producer, Pete Anderson, came out of there, and his father had come from Western Kentucky because they would go look for jobs there. John Prine's family, he wrote Paradise about his family returning to their home place on the weekends in Western Kentucky

because they'd moved to Chicago looking for jobs. They'd looked for work. So what kind of, well who were the big country acts out of Detroit and Chicago at the time? Well, I'm trying to think, well recently Billy Strings came out of Michigan. Oh I know, yeah, he's great, I had him on. Fantastic.

Unbelievable. But again, his legacy, the lineage, if you read Malcolm McDowell's great, I had him on. Fantastic. Unbelievable. But again, his legacy, the lineage, if you read Malcolm McDowell's great book, Outliers, he talks about this in a chapter that they did a double blind test at University of Michigan setting up a quote, psych experiment that you get paid as a student to go be participated in what the experiment started in the hallway

where they had a big lineman from the football team out there with a file counter blocking your way. You know, if you pull out a drawer like, oh, sorry, man, and you know, just to see if they got a reaction out of these young guys who had a background that was even two generations or so more removed from the South.

And the behavior, the psychological behavior, they would ask them a series of questions. Yeah. Going to prove what? To, to, to prove how they reacted to social circumstances and what they took umbrage to. And he talks in a chapter about the feuding culture in Southeast Kentucky and where around the world

that the feuding culture goes on. Right. Southeast Kentucky and where around the world that the feuding culture goes on, right? And it's usually where the topography or the geography, the top, but the, but is not conducive to agrarian culture where it's herding culture, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the Mediterranean crest, you get clandestine behavior because it's a herd culture and you can't let the smallest umbrage kind of go unaddressed. Like a guy bumps you at a bar. It may be a perimeter kind of probe to see if you're vulnerable to him coming and stealing

your sheep that night. Territorial. Yeah, with taking what's yours. And that's what Billy comes from? Billy Bob. Billy Strings. Billy Strings comes out of South Eastern Kentucky. His stepdad, I mean I heard that album

and it was like, there's pure Eastern Kentucky in this. And then I started reading about his background and how they'd moved back, I think the Moorhead, that area, which is Route 23, which I was born on Pikeville, which is the furthest city down that road. So when you're coming up, like where your folks settled in Kentucky.

Well, we moved to Ohio. We moved across the river. My dad came back, and after I was born, he jettisoned his military career, which he lamented the rest of my life. I would have been retired. And I said, you'd have been in Vietnam. Yeah.

He goes, well, maybe, maybe it was, you know, you had a lot of stripes, they're going to send you first. Yeah. Anyway, uh, I mean, it was all, so that was Ohio. Oh, and the bit of teasing, but then Columbus, which is South central. That's where you grew up.

Yeah. Principally. Yeah. But I used to say we were tail light babies. So my mother worked, she was a key puncher operator. She ended up running a data center for a manufacturing company that would fire parts up the road to Detroit.

In Columbus. Supplying, yeah. Auto parts? Yeah, a large manufacturing factory. But she had worked her way up being a key puncher operator, a computer operator. Yeah. A large manufacturing factory, but she, uh, had worked her way up being a key punch operator, a computer operator, fifties and sixties, right?

You know, big old Univac things from, you know, a James Bond movie. And, uh, there was a guy that worked with her that went to our church, another Kentucky transplant, because of the whole, this migratory kind of move that, and Billy String's family comes into Michigan out of that, and I used to joke and say, we ran out of gas halfway to Detroit.

You know, it's like, it was, we actually had some earlier family there that they would land, you know, the girls in my mother's family. My aunt was married to my father's older brother, my mother's older sister, that's how they met. So it's a pretty tight family. Well, that part, and they never had children, so my sister and brother and I were, and I'm the oldest,

and I kinda had to find my own way. So where does music start? The earliest memory I have singing, toward a record player with my aunt and my mom, wedge between them on a little couch, singing to Hank Loughlin's Send Me The Pill That You Dream On. That's the first musical memory I have,

and we were literally hollering it back at the record player. It was split stereo, earliest, like snap-off thing. And we were playing that record. That band, I don't know what even stereo, that was mono actually, because it was late 50s, maybe 1960s. Wasn't a console? No, not at that point.

They had the color TV consoles later, that piece of, Mike Nesmith told me one time from the Monkeys, was a friend, and he said something really, you know, sentiently funny. He said, well you know Dwight, what they say, because he was film producer in the 80s, and he did Repo Man, and he said,

you know what they say, they say theater is life, film is art, and television is furniture. This is in the 90s, when it was still. Well, he's an interesting character that kind of, it kind of factors into the new country. Well, all of it, yes. What was that, those albums? First National Band.

First National Band. He had the full on nudie suits, Chris Hillman from the Birds and I, who's a friend and also. You did one of his songs on the new record. Yes, he's a co-conspirator. He does the burrito stand on my channel, the Bakersfield Beat, on Sirius Channel.

Well, he was a burritos guy and then the birds got. Well, he was birds first. He was a bluegrass kid out of Southern California, out of down North San Diego County. Rancho Santa Fe, way down when it was just this outpost down there along the coast. But so you start though, like when you start playing, your first, like when did you start to learn guitar?

Where was that happening? I was, well first shots of me, my dad, brought back from Korea, which is what we were talking about earlier, I digress, took you off on tangents, and started with you and Alaska. Alaska, we went to Alaska through Michigan, through Kentucky, the Ohio River, Cincinnati. We started with. Yeah, why you in Alaska. We went to Alaska through Michigan, through Kentucky, the Ohio River, Cincinnati. We started with.

Yeah. Why you like Alaska? Or why you're fascinated with it? No, we started with you coming from New Mexico. Yeah. So that's like Tom T. Hall had a great song title, That's How I Got to Memphis. Sort of what this interview's like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's how I got to Memphis. Tom T. Hall. Tom T. Hall. He's a good one. He's a great writer, a Kentuckian. And his weird connection. His brother worked at the factory.

My mother ran the data center for. What was that big hit he had? Well, he had, well, Harbor Valley PTA he wrote. Right. Genie T. Riley. Yeah, but then he had one, a slow one. Well, he wrote, ah, love, little baby ducks. Old pickup trucks.

Yeah. Slow moving trains, and rain. Great writer, great storyteller writer. Do you know him? No, I never met Tom, in passing once. So you're growing up in Columbus. By that point, yeah. And when do you start playing?

Well, two years old I'm trying. I'm carrying this. Oh, you got the guitar from Korea? I got a K guitar that my dad brings home from. Are they made in Korea? No, no, but he ended up with it, vis-a-vis somebody probably owed a gambling debt or whatever. Like one of those ones with the painted on pickguard?

No, no, no, no, it was a real guitar. F-hole, you know, F-hole K. Like my dad had a Harmony with the F-holes. Yeah, Harmony, but K's, you know, slightly better than Harmony. K guitar. So I had that, and all I wanna do is, you know, emulate everything I was hearing,

and I've got a shot of me in my box set from years ago with my granny, Earline Tips, holding the top of us, because I could barely hold it. And I eventually, when I was about three or four, tripped and fell and crushed it, broke it. So the next time that I actually get a real guitar, and I really didn't play it, I was just banging around and trying to,

was, I was in third grade and all I wanted, I had pestered him that whole summer, the fall. Who, your dad? Guitar for Christmas. Guitar for Christmas. What'd you get? Santa Claus. He pawned a shotgun, the only good gun he ever really had and bought me a guitar.

Cause he ran a Texaco station at that point. But he had been a master mechanic training in the Army. So that's a big deal. Big deal to let go of the shotgun. Huge deal actually, as I looked back, it gets to me, as a kid, my mom would say to me at one point when I was maybe bucking my dad or doing whatever, she would bring that up to me. The shotgun.

That you have a guitar only because your father, you know, wanted you, as an adult, when I think about it and my heart, you know, you know, cause who he was and the kind of guy was, he was not, you know, he was a good guy. Neither of my parents, thank God for me, were malicious. And I realized as an adult how lucky that part of my life was. They weren't geniuses, weren't rocket scientists. But decent people.

Really decent. And I really, really, really thank fate. really decent. I really, really, really thank fate for delivering me there and not somewhere else as I grew to know other people and their experiences. As a young adult you start to know and especially over the years. Yeah, anyway. Well, so that's a touching thing, you made that sacrifice. Well, so anyway, so at eight years old, well, I have actually written about that. It seems like a natural country tag. My dad pawned a shuck and so I got my first guitar.

I never really literally did, I wrote something, the first thing I ever wrote when I was about eight years old was called How Far Is Heaven and the first thing I ever wrote when I was about eight years old was called How Far is Heaven? And the first line, it was, because we were watching every evening when we'd sit down to supper, Walter Cronkite would be on the living room still, doing the nightly news, and the first images of the Vietnam War were coming in on night.

Rice paddies, helicopters, and guys dying. And I wrote this song, a fictitious account, and I didn't really finish it. It was a verse and a bit of a chorus. It's called How Far is Heaven. And it started with my daddy got killed over in Vietnam, and here's just a few things that I don't understand. Pillow belly walls.

So I began, and my father was a little disturbed. I would write something about a father. He'd said to me, he said, what do you think? He wanted me to get killed in Vietnam? I didn't go. He was. He was. He was a songwriter. Yeah.

The fictitious. But you know, the concept of that was a little evasive for him to grasp at that point, looking at me at eight, just learning a few chords. What do you think that, you know, what music inspired you to write that? The Hillbilly stuff that I grew up hearing. Oh, that's all of it. On the weekends, I used to call it- A lot of dead people in Hillbilly stuff.

Yeah, exactly. A lot of darkness in the hollers, but when we crossed one of the covers that Billy Strings did, I think with Step Dad was Stonewalls and Steel Bars, and You on My Mind. It's on that album that they did together. And the first time I ever heard that was Keith Whitley singing it, it was Ralph Stanley and his band. He and Ricky Skaggs were young teenage members of the Ralph Stanley

Clinch Mountain Boys, and it's a haunted, you know, song about a guy in prison. Anyway. It's interesting that you can, if you just change a tone or a tempo, sometimes the difference between haunting and upbeat is just a beat. Well and in bluegrass music you have both going on simultaneously often. You'll have something, a very dark subject matter with an uptempo, you know, go down, you Knoxville girl, where a guy murders this woman because she's, you know, been no good to him or something, you know, you treat him badly or betray him.

And it's uptempo, go down, go down, you knock the girl down. It's like they murders her. It go down, you knock the girl down. It's like, they murders her. It's like kind of a happy dance tune, till you start listening to what goes on. It's like, oh, damn, you killed that woman, didn't you? It's like down by the banks of the Ohio is a famous folk, you know.

I asked my love to take a walk, to take a walk, just a little walk down by the where the waters flow down by the banks of the Ohio. Does he kill her? And he yeah, he kills her dead. Kills her dead or dead actually. But anyway, so there's this, it's Irish Scottish Welsh folk, music. This is where it's handed down from and it's all there. It's like the band's version of Long Black Veil. Exactly. That kills me, man.

Oh. It kills me. Well, that's LaVon bringing that stuff to the band. It just kills me. I mean, that, you point to one of the great, you know, classic examples of that. Yeah, yeah. That, you know, that, I guess it's cathartic, you know,

it's, you get the catharsis of this out. Well, it's interesting, it's because the weight of it, you know, like when you think about Irish music or Celtic music, that the weight of history that Ireland has had to bear is not dissimilar to Kentucky the way you're describing it. Well, yeah, they're into the boot heel, right? And they had the buck revolt finally. Yeah.

The South becomes the Republic. The North is still up into recent history. So when did you start to find your voice on the guitar? At eight. But it was alone in my bedroom and people like it, junior high, high school, didn't know, I was not, I played drums. What are you listening to though?

I'm listening to, my dad had a great album by Stonewall Jackson and he had, he bought it for my mom after an argument because it had a hit song called Don't Be Angry with Me Darling, anyway, and he gave it to her as an apology. Did it work? Yeah, and that's the kind of guy, he came in and was like, I got you something.

Hating her album, and it had Stonewall's hit Don't Be Angry with Me Darling if I fail to understand. Anyway, so I had this album and I started listening to it and there's a great George Jones song on it, an album called Life to Go. And Stonewall, that was the only version I knew of it. I didn't know that George wrote it until later when I was looking at writing credits.

And I'll get back to Mike Nesmith in a moment. I know that's where we started. We'll get to California eventually. What Nesmith in a moment. I know that's where we start. We'll get to California eventually. What Nesmith will bring us to that. But Stonewall Jackson, his hit, Life to Go, which is not unlike what we were talking about, the darkness of songs and the hillbilly culture, George Jones wrote, and it goes,

I've got a sad, sad story, story friends that I don't like to tell, but he's gonna tell you anyway. Sure. I had a wife and family. I mean, it's like, what a way to start. I wrote one years ago. Good setup. Sort of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. About a guy who goes, you'll be sorry you asked me the reason. It's like the whole song is my, the voice singing it, telling the guy. But that was sourced in a tradition. Exactly. So he says, I've got a sad, sad story of friends that I don't like to tell. I had a wife and family when they locked me in the cell. I've been in here 18 years, a long time, long, long time, I know, but time don't mean a thing to me cuz I got life to go He tells a story about I went out one night where the lights were bright just to see what I could see a menopause

An old friend who thought the world of me Bought me drinks that he took me to every honky-tonk in town sounds like a shitty friend already But then words were said now he's dead. I just had to bring him down Killed the guy that was buying the drinks. Yep. Anyway, it was a really poignant, now I've gone, dragged you into that deep part of that. So I got to fit it with the thing that got to me,

even at nine, 10, 11 years old listening to that album, I was fascinated with it. It was a weight to it. Yeah, well, the verse that got me was he said, I had a wife and family when they locked me in this cell but I'll be here in this prison now till my body's just a shell. And I bet that little girl of mine doesn't realize or know

that her daddy's been here 18 years and still got life to go. Cause the loss, you know, when that happens, when somebody gets incarcerated and when somebody goes away to deep time, you know, the ones, the innocents that are left behind and awake, you don't think about that too much. Murrell Haggard's song I've talked about over the years often that taught me more about songwriting as a young adult, I stared at the record when I heard the lyric, it has

one verse, it's called Holding Things Together. It starts with a chorus, holding things together. Ain't no easy thing to do when it comes to raising children is a job meant for two. And perspective is the wife has left the family, not the other way around. It's usually the husband has left. And, but he's left there with the kids alone.

Uh, and he goes, uh, but Alice, please believe me, I can't go on and on holding things together with you gone. He goes, but the verse, the only verse in the song is, today was Angie's birthday. And it must have slipped your mind. I tried twice to call you with no answer either time. But the postman brought a package package I mailed some days ago. I signed it, love from mama, so Angie wouldn't know. You don't get any more poignant than that.

This is a dad that has to cover for the mom that's left the old blues song Motherless Child. There's nothing worse. Yeah. Because I watch, you know, I've got a little guy in this album. Yeah. Brighter Days is an outgrowth. He sings at the end of one of them, right?

He does, yeah, he comes in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he forced me to write the song, well, didn't force me, he prompted my writing the song. Yeah, which one was it? Brighter Days, the title track. Yeah. As I looked at him, we were in the height of,

at that point, two years into COVID, he's about two years old, he was born in 2020. And what a strange experience, you know, like my living, my life, reverse anyway. It's like I thought that possibility for me had passed. Yeah, well I didn't think, I'd always thought I would have children, you know? And you look around one day, John Lennon's famous quote,

life's what goes on when you're making other plans. Yeah. Right. You know? And, um, there he was and there he is. Thanks to my beautiful wife, Emily, who, uh, came into my life, you know, some years before we had planned on, we had decided to get married and it just, as fate would have it, in 2019,

we said we're gonna make good on this promise, we're getting married. And then he showed up, we realized just before we were married, she was pregnant with him. And you're no youngster. No, you know. You were like, okay. Well, I'm spry.

Yeah. And you know what, He makes me young. Now I'm sure. I now feel a certain, uh, and it's not a condescending tone to this, but I feel a sadness for, especially guys, because women have a natural maternal instinct that they kind of sense. Sure. Being a mother is part

of their biology. We don't, it's not our nature. Our nature is to try and not get trapped. Another great song Murl wrote, Murl Haggard, this is California country music, in capital letters, was called The Running Kind. I was born the running kind with leaving always on my mind. Home was never home for me at any time.

He said every front door left me hoping that I'd find a back door open. Because there just had to be an exit for the running kind. That's kind of the, especially young guys, you know, 19, 20. A certain type of guy, yeah, sure. I mean, yeah, but I think it's more common for men to, you know, the hunter gatherer nature of.

Or also just, you know, kind of like selfish fucked up. Yes, the selfishness of men, you know, we are. I never thought that way till I had my own little guy and I'm like, you know, a child in my world, I'm like, wow, you know, I miss this for other people. Yeah. Friends. Well, good for you. Friends that I, no, no, no, I mean, I, I mean, you know,

it's a weird emotion to have. No, I think it's good. That I miss it for other friends. Yeah, other guys, you know, I don't, I've been married twice and didn't have kids. I used to do a joke about it. Takes special kind of asshole to have two wives and no kids.

I think my second wife put it like this, you think I'm bringing children into this? I had, yeah. I mean, it's like, well. That think my second wife put it like this, you think I'm bringing children into this? I had, yeah. I mean, it's like, well. That's my country song. And the funny thing there, you think I'm bringing kids into this? Oh man. Anyway, so.

But no, but I see guys who have kids and definitely change them. It opens up something in you. It talks about the glory and the happiness and the fulfillment, but they also don't talk about the struggle for parents. Well, the panic. I mean, like, I think that's one of the reasons I didn't have them.

Like, I used to say, like, you know, I don't have kids. And if I think about having a kid right now, my thought is like, is he okay? Is he still breathing? Did you check on the kid? What's going on? Well, my mother used to tell a story about this old woman that in his holler.

And she said, they came by her house and miss Collins, she said, miss Collins, why are you crying? She's on the porch. She said, Oh, I was just thinking. She goes, well, what were you thinking about? Made you cry. She goes, Oh, I was just thinking, I don't have any children, but if I was ever to have had a child and something would have happened to that child, Oh, something could have happened to that child. And I'd have been just, what if they'd have died?

And what you're going to, it's this whole made up scenario with the story goes on and on. She's miserable anyways. Yeah. Made herself just the thought of it. That's what I'm saying. And it is, I've never been as frightened in my life as when in the four years he's been led, the few moments of sheer terror

that I thought he was hurt. I've never felt fear like I've felt for myself or anybody, a family member, but never as severe as that. So, in any event, I, yeah, I've, very fortunately I've had this, and the album was an outgrowth of, that day I was sitting and reading a book,

and one of the rooms in the house that I have a guitar, sitting in, and he came in, and he has a little Telecaster ukulele that he dragged around. Because he went, he's a weird experience. I was back out toward the end of 2020 doing a couple of things and in 2021 I was out doing shows and he was able, he went out and probably went to 60 shows

by the time he was two years old. Oh, I stopped because it got harder as he got a little older, but he would have a, this little telecaster, you call it. So he had that on, he goes, dad, he was talking a bit. He's play. He was like pointing my guitar. He's like, ah, come on, come on, bike. And I thought, oh, okay, I'm gonna stop what I'm doing.

So I stopped and I was looking, and just his excitement about it, you know, touched me, and I grabbed it, started, what do you wanna sing? What do you wanna, and he had, and he would kind of intone stuff that I, you know, he'd heard me sing. And I looked at him and just began,

I said, well, let's write something. Let's make something up. And I started singing that first verse, like, what are we gonna do? Looking at him, just the joy of him, his expression, his excitement of the smallest thing of just me picking up that, stopping what I was doing to focus on him, brought such excitement to his eyes,

and he started laughing, and I said, okay, well, the brightness of that moment, because in 2022, we were all still fumbling around with being shut down, opened up, shut down, couldn't go to the grocery store without a three masks on and anyway, and I went, well, there's brightness and I was just like, brighter days, rub my head, because early on, I was getting him just, when he was an infant, say something to me, and I got him on video, going, tell daddy you love him, and he was like,

ah, and he made the sound of just mimicking me. And I kept that clip, like, you said I love you, and it's projecting onto this two month old, three month old. But I looked at him and went brighter days or up with brighter days. That's what you said the first time you ever spoke to me. Me just that, you know, the license. And so he was howling back and forth to me with this, you know, banging around. And so then I finished that song and I gave him

a co-writer credit on it, but I do control the publisher. I had to let him know that. Well I'll tell you this record, like you know, I hadn't heard a record of yours in a long time, you haven't made one in a long time. But I put this thing on and I'm like, holy fuck, he means business. Oh well thank you.

I mean every song is great song. Holy fuck, could go the other way too. No,, well, thank you. I mean, every song is great song. Holy fuck could go the other way too. No, no. But thank you. Every fucking song lands and the sound. Well, some of it came out of this channel of the Bakersfield beat on the Sirius XM, because that's where I met Post in 2018. He came in, I didn't know of him only through. Post Malone?

Yeah, Post Malone. Yeah. And he had just had the, he had White Iverson had happened and he had the first, the big of him only through Post Malone. Yeah, Post Malone. Yeah. And he had just had the, he had, White Iverson had happened and he had the first, the big Republic record that he put out. And he was between that and the next one. Yeah. And I said, I know, I haven't heard it.

And they said, have you heard it? He's got you on all of his playlists. And I didn't know that I looked into, he's raised in Dallas, right? He's a kid, you know, taken to Texas. And he came on the show, and he's noodling around with one of my guitars at the Sirius station, you know, with the studio. And before we start, and I'm like watching him,

I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you playing? Because I could tell it was a finger pick, Bob Dylan, he started doing Don't Think Twice. I said, ho, ho, ho. I said, Charlie Crockett later told me, the country guy, Charlie said, oh, oh, oh. I said, Charlie Crockett later told me, the country guy, Charlie said, yeah, I first heard of him. I went up to Dallas, he's a teenager, his dad was dropping off at bars.

He said, there's this guy, Austin Post, his given name, and he said, and he's sitting in clubs, his dad drops him off, and he sits and does Dylan songs. And I said, no, no, you're playing that first. So that folks know, whether it's the band's long black veil or whatever, that you really, the earnestness of his love of music, independent of style.

Because at that point he was known for the kind of pseudo rap, that urban thing that launched him. And I knew he had enormous love for country music. He wanted to do Thousand Miles From Nowhere, my song, and we did it together that night. And then I had him do Haggard stuff with me. It's on video if you look it up. So this is what this inspired you to do the record?

Well, it led to my doing what I did with him on the record, which, you know, bang, bang, boom, boom. Right. The track on there, I don't know how to say goodbye. Because I had finished the album, had mixed it, two weeks later they called and said Post, because they had asked me about doing Stagecoach with him. Yeah.

Because I was there the night before doing my own show, and they said, Post is there the next night, wants you to sit in if you would. Yeah. I said, sure. He said, he's doing this, like a covers album, country music,

which was not correct. You know, became the album that he's put out now, F1 Trillion. Yeah. But they said, but he wants to sing on your record. I said, I just finished it. It's like mixed, done. I said, God, why didn't somebody tell me three months ago?

And I got through a couple stoplights and said, my wife was with me in a car, Emily, I said, I was gonna write something for us. I wanna just, because I know he likes traditional country music, so I said, I want to write a shuffle. Because we had decided we would do, that's what the calls back and forth were about,

my manager's thing. The one in which I said, well I already did Thousand Miles with Carrie Underwood at CMA Fest, and we did guitars, she and I did that there. Fast as you with Keith Urban at Stagecoach, and I said, I don't know. I said, maybe Little Ways. And he'd call me and say, yeah, Little Ways.

He loves Little Ways. So I went, he loves that. I said, I'm gonna write one for him. Just for he and I to do. And so I did this in that vein of that moment in my career. That came off the second album, Hillbilly Deluxe. And I have, you know, the cover of Chris Holman on the record, which is outgrowth of doing

the radio shows with him and then him launching his own show on our channel. And then Jeffrey Steelele who was a California native and a country musician in the late 80s early 90s with his band Boy Howdy that came in the next wave after my band and I broke in the mid 80s out of the cow punk scene you know with the Blasters, Justice, Los. Well, the preceding groups were the Blasters, Los Lobos, they were on Slash, and X, John Doe and Xzine, and the Knitters, the offshoot of that,

because the punk rockers, which California, every decade or so, has rock and rollers who decide they want to explore the country roots of California. And that is, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens. Well, they go back to that, but preceding that, which is one of the slug lines of the channel, is the dust bowl to the Hollywood bowl,

all points between and beyond. From Buck Owens to the birds, it all points between and beyond, because one begats, begats, begats. And it's that way in history, it's throughout, it's social cultural history, but it's the Tom Jode road, the grapes are out, delivers really what gives you Fleetwood Mac and the pop incarnation of the Eagles in the 70s.

California, the California sound that took over the airways from the early 70s through the late 70s. Right. So, but you come up listening to Merle, listening to Buck Owens. Yeah, early because they were distant figures in California and I didn't realize until I became a young adult that disparate, you had Nashville, but you had this outpost, the Bakersfield Sound, the Bakersfield Beat came out of actually Hollywood. I think Credence even comes from it all.

Well, the East Bay, Oakland, the working class side of the Bay, right? The blue collar. John Fogarty talks about that. He had never been to Lodi and he wrote Lodi. Yeah. He said never been to that. But you went to Nashville? Briefly, yeah.

Well, you know, I went there, cause that's, you went there. You had a band together? I didn't have a band at that point. I had a rockabilly band out of high school. It was what goes back to, you know, nobody knew. I was at home in my room and in church, a cappella church, a cappella singing in church, we didn't, Church of Christ was I was raised in and the variation of the church that I

was in didn't believe in the first century they used any instrumentation in worship. So we had a pitch pipe and we sang acapella. So I came out of that culture. So I was singing there as a child all the way through. Right. And it's Hibbilly hymn tradition, which is different than deep Southern gospel, which is rooted in African-American culture, you know, and the blues influence of that. This is Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Presbyterian hymns,

like Old Rugged Cross, In the Garden, famous hymn, the Hillbilly hymns. But my schoolmates, my peers, didn't know anything about this. They didn't know I could sing at all. And I heard some band members, stage band members trying to get ready for a variety show that I was hosting, singing, trying to do some incarnation

of Sha Na Na in 73, because they had happened at Woodstock and yeah, right. Sha Na Na had taken this throwback to the 50s. There was a moment, you know, and the uh, the movie came out, uh, American graffiti. Yeah. And that same summer. And sure. I heard them trying to do something. I went in and went, what are you guys doing? And I said, well, you know, you know, we're doing a,

like a greaser thing, you know, band. So I went, well, you mean like this, I picked up the guitar. They didn't know I played, they played drums and I started singing everly's to them and they were like, what? So I became the front guy and I was hosting that high school variety show that year with another guy, because I was in the theater department

and I ended up doing it for the first time my junior year and it became a rage. The 50s band. Yeah, it was a weird kind of hybrid of that because I didn't gas my hair back. I had hair still there, I'm a bang tang, but all the other guys looked like Lords of Flatbush of the Flap books, the movie that, you know, Henry Winkler and you ever saw Stallone. Great film.

I rewatch it. It's an odd movie. It's a very odd movie. The greatest scene ever in there is where Stallone's at the jewelry store, where the girlfriend brought him the ring that he could, and he goes, won't you wait outside? If you ever. He grabbed the gigas. You see that girl outside? He makes her go out of the jewelry trick.

You see her stand out there? She's chewing gum and kind of waiting to do it. He goes, if you ever see that girl come in the store again, you ever show her a ring. Yeah, yeah. There's that much money. I will come back here. Anyway, nothing else that scene is great.

There's a humanness to that. There's a real gritty movie. Well, the humility of what he had just, he couldn't buy that ring for her, even if he wanted to. This jeweler, you know, trading her up, you know, getting her in it. You like all the heartbreak stuff.

Well, you know, just the moment of, you know. The weight. Yeah, so that was going on that whole period. And I, you know, was now decided I got this taste of response that was strong and positive. You'd done some theater though too? Yeah, I'd been, you know that was strong and positive. But you'd done some theater though too? Yeah, I'd been, yeah. In plays and stuff.

Not very sophisticated stuff, but just on stage and acting. And, but this was the first love, the thing that I'd done, the music. Kept hidden at home. And I broke up with the guitar and we started playing gigs

and there were sock hops going on again because of American Graffiti and all that stuff. I get out of high school, nothing going on. The country rock thing had taken hold by this point. The Eagles and all. So I was really 72, three, four, right? Because I get out in 74. So the birds are done.

Yeah, that's done, but it's the precedents. Sure. And the burritos are this done. They're the most famous band that nobody ever heard. I knew the Eagles were out there and credence, John Fogerty, as it through junior high and high school, what a fucking band. Oh, he was my, my handhold that I could have a conversation with a peer. That led Zeppelin. So all of that, but Creed and John Fogarty, you know, cause you're that point of transition, cause I have an older sibling and the oldest of three.

Yeah. So I didn't have anybody coaching me through and I had an access point to Fogarty ironically because looking out my back door, where he's just listening to Buck Owens, you know, uh, Buck Owens, dude, dude, dude, looking out my back door. And I knew there was something special and unique and American about Fogarty and what he was doing, you know, and Credence. And they became, you know, without a plan or design,

the soundtrack, if you will, the backdrop sound, audio soundtrack to the Vietnam War in a lot of weird ways, Run Through the Jungle, Fortunate Son, you know, all those things that he was writing. I just watched that DVD of them live at Albert Hall. They were just a fucking machine, dude. How good? It was almost like they didn't even fucking care

about the audience. No! He was right there on top of the drummer, dude. Pure music. Pure music. Pure music, Fogerty. So I was thrilled, you know, that, but I didn't know how to put an electric band together. So it was Emmy's record, that first record.

Were you like, were you- And Linda, Linda's first three, Linda Ross. Sure, sure. You know, because she was doing silver threads and everything. But Emmy, because by then I was just 75, college, you know. So I was at Ohio State and I was, you know. So everything's coming into you, but you're not playing country music. So I go to Nashville because I'm figuring

that's the, I had friends there that I could go down there and kind of hang with and I auditioned at the Opera Land Park because I thought, well, I don't know, nobody's got a roadmap, how do you, my parents didn't know, they just thought, well, you better go to college, get something to fall back on,

because we, nobody knew, show business is so foreign. Yeah, sure. Everybody, even I'm sure your family. Well, they never want you to sign, they don't want you to go that way. If they don't have family in it. They're worried. No, they are.

So I go to Nashville and spend my wheels there briefly. And. Was there something there that disillusioned you? No, I just, they offered me an alt slot in the park because they had performers throughout the Opera Land Park through the summer. Yeah. And I passed the first audition, I hung around

a couple of weeks, went back and did another, and then went back home and back to Ohio and they called said well you have an alternate so if you just want to come and hang out yeah in the meantime my guitar player got him Billy Alves yeah who'd been in that rockabilly band with me right said he had relatives in California was coming out here I didn't realize he was just coming to visit his intent wasn't to stay so you're going with me, right? You're coming. I'm taking you.

You're going. Yeah. Because he, he had the wherewithal to sense. I needed some prodding and so I sold my 68 and pallet of my brother. Yeah. 150 bucks. Yeah.

And gotten his 74 Volkswagen Beetle. That's a downsizing. Yeah. Well, I got in that with him and didn't even for 150 bucks and gotten his 74 Volkswagen Beetle. And we took off all on car. Yeah, well I'd gotten that with him and didn't even own a car. We drove and ended up in Long Beach, California. And he had family in Tustin, Orange County. And I said, well look, man, we've come this far,

let's find someplace either at the beach or in Hollywood. Yeah. And we started in Santa Monica and couldn't afford anything until we got to Long Beach. Yeah. It was something we could probably make ends me to afford.

We ended up there. He stayed till just like 4th of July. This was in the spring, like early March and he left and I planted my flag and stayed. You know, I got a job, I rode a bus and got a job in the loading dock at Bullocks Lakewood, an old department store here. And I stayed and I managed to scrape up money together,

get a car, a little Chevy Vega, and started driving up to the Palomino at night, the club in the valley, and they had a hoot night up there every Thursday night and I'd go up there and watch. Who was around? Yeah, and sit in and started to meet like-minded musicians. Like who? Well, I met a guy named Boo Bernstein

who became an executive at Capitol Records later, but he was a steel guitar player, just various guys, and you start to try to put a band together. And I finally did through a guy from Tulsa, Oklahoma, named Stuart Deaming. I don't know if you remember these names. Yeah. This guy, and he knew a drummer named Richard Coffee. And Richard believed in me and he started playing with me in a place called the Corral

out here in Lakeview Terrace. Right up the road here from where you are in Glendale, where Foothill and Osborne meet. Oh yeah. Right? It's no longer there, it's gone. There's like a civic center, a library or something for kids up there.

So you're tapping into what is country here? Yeah, it's been here since the Tom jode road, the dust bowl they brought with them. The Oakies, the Arkies and the Texas. But what's going on in 70s, 1978, 70. Yeah. So the punks starting to happen. Yeah.

Oh, the punk scene is going because LA punk happens really in 79 with X. Yeah. But it's going on, but I'm suited to do what I do. I'm, you know, I'm doing Bill Monroe and Merle Haggard. So this mandolin player. I know, but I've got just hillbilly me on the guitar and the guitar is league guitarists, bass

and drums and, uh, we're playing. I couldn't. I looked back and I thought, well, I wasn't good enough to play the Thursday, Friday, Saturday slot at this lake, at the Corral, but I was good enough to do the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So I'm doing the off nights. And I was driving air freight in the daytime, go out there at night and start at nine and go. Playing covers?

Nine till two. But my covers were hardcore country. And I mean, and it's right ahead of the urban, the whole urban cowboy thing had happened. That year I think when it came out, or 79 it came out. But still you're just playing for whatever you can scrape up for country audiences here? Yeah, but I wouldn't do the top 40 version of country. I wasn't doing Looking for Love, the urban cowboy stuff. I was doing Haggard, George Jones, you know, all the stuff that would, you know.

Sure. But people wanted to dance to it and they liked it and I spent a year in there, a solid year. At the Corral. At the Off Notes. Yeah. Five sets a night and, you know, it grows you up. I met other musicians and was there the night that John Lennon was killed. I remember Delaney Bramlett.

Yeah. I met other musicians and was there the night that John Lennon was killed. I remember Delaney Bramlett, who one of the great musicians in California ever, came out of the South. He and Leon Russell formed the band for Shindig. I didn't realize at the time, but he came in wrecked, because he knew John Lennon that night. So that's what I'm doing that year.

And I'm getting my sea legs and meeting more musicians and a guy, Boo Bernstein, said, I'm playing with this guy. You gotta come meet him over in the West Valley. He's playing at this place called Wild Bill's Roundup. And I go over in Chatsworth, right? And sit in this night, and it's this guitar player named Pete Anderson.

And he heard me sing this Murrell Haggard song. And we, I said, well, I do it now. And we did two or three songs. He starts talking. He's curious about me. And he's from Detroit and it leads to us developing a musical friendship and him saying, what are you doing by this point through the drummer from Tulsa?

Yeah. He said, you got to meet a guy who's a staff engineer at United Western. And he meets me through Richard and says, thank you, Richard. This guy, I could cut songs because he had spec time. He was a house engineer at United Western, which is the old Western recorders on sunset

Boulevard that Frank Sinatra built with Bill Putnam, who had a United Sound URI speakers in the studios. You ever one of the big monitors? Yeah. The blue foam on the horn. URI, United. So United Western Studios, I had no idea the history of this till later that I was in there. And he said, well, we'll trade, if I can get you a deal, we'll trade publishing. And I was green enough to not realize, you know, you're cause been writing these songs years that

I'd been here writing about my family and you know, my life before California. Sure. And he said, uh, I can cut sides on you. So after I get off at work at night, he would have spec time there and I go in and we would cut. And the band he put together, cause he knew he had access to the cats in town.

And it's the end of the wrecking crew. Yeah. You know, late. Sure. But this point it's probably 81 by now. Okay. But the guys that I cut the demos that are on my best, there's a new series of albums that came

out on Warner the first part of the year, the first three albums. Yeah. And there's other stuff that came out and they're these demos and the band that did the demos consisted of of Glenn D Hardin on piano. Yeah. Who was in Elvis's band. David Mansfield's playing fiddle. David Mansfield's mandolin fiddle player, I mean, prodigy, was on Rolling Thunder Review with Bob Dylan. He was like 17 years old out touring with him. He had Jerry McGee on guitar,

who had been part of the record crew, going back to the Monkees, and I'll get back to Nesmith and I and our experience together. But Nesmith is doing country rock before there's a term for it in the Monkees. and our experience together. But Nesmith is doing country rock before there's a term for it in the Monkeys. 66, that first album, I'm a kid who sees this,

you know, I got the Beatles by that point, but still not as fully as that exposing color on a console TV, right? In the fall of 66 in everybody's living room. It's this fictitious band, but there's a real musician, Mike Nesma, in this band, who writes, Linda Ronstadt's first radio hit was the Stone Ponies. You and I travel to the beat of a different drum.

Mike Nesma's write that, wrote that. The Stone Ponies get records, they're good. That was his song. Really? Yeah, and so they're letting Mike have two songs on each Monkey's album. Yeah. That he gets to sing and produce and write.

And so I hear, on the first Monkey's album, I hear, not knowing, I'm hearing Carole King co-write with Mike Nesmith. I'm hearing the Boyce and Hart write inverted versions of paperback rider with last friend to Clarksville, which turns out being hillbilly fide. So that's going on.

And Nesmith was bringing the Texas sound to the monkeys. Yeah. He said, they didn't want to hear any hillbilly. They want to hear from, he said, but you can do it, just don't call it that. But I point to on the channel, and Chris Hillman and I talk about this a lot, that it really begins

country rock. With First National Band? No, with Rick Nelson and the Ozzie and Harriet show. And Rick Nelson, Ricky Nelson, becomes 16 years old and Ozzy decides, I'm gonna let him do his music on the show. And he becomes the heartthrob that is, well the first hit's Hello Mary Lou.

That's country rock. But that's really Louvin' Brother, Elverly Brothers through Hello Mary Lou. But it's country rock when you listen and listen to him play Young World and the guitar sound, the tonality of that, and then what he did, it's not Memphis rockabilly. You know, Ozzy let Ricky pick most of that material.

People are unaware of that. Rick Nelson picked his own material. And my argument is that he's one of the greatest singers in rock music because he didn't think he could sing. So this moves through, you know, so your roots come up through, eventually it gets, because that's pre-Birds.

Oh yeah. So and that's, so it's pre all that stuff. Chris Hill and I talked about it, he said, yes, you are right, Rick Nelson is the radar return of what's going to come from over the horizon. Sure, but in terms of like where your direct ascendant-y from like the... The Late Birds, that Sweetheart of the Rodeo album.

Sure, and then, but then those Mike Nesmith records... Absolutely, Joanne, Silver Moon, those things I heard on the radio. No one really knows about those albums. I know. It's the first national band, right? Oh no, it's brilliant. Yeah. And he has Red Roads in that band. There's like what I know man, right? Yeah. Yeah, and he has red roads in that band

I got three or four records. Yeah, and and but her name was Joanne And she lived in a meadow by a fall Yeah, and he wrote that he understanding in the lonely light of the silver moon Yeah, these hillbilly things this country rock first national band stuff And but like when you're on AM radio, when you're living here though, so when you start really working, when you get out of the country rooms,

are you playing with Los Lobos and the Blast Off? A guy comes out and hears me, because Pete and I had put another incarnation of a band together, and we start playing the bars, we got fired more as much as we got hired, because they wanted to hear urban cowboy top country. And I wasn't doing that.

Wasn't suited to do it. Wasn't doing it. And we were really by that point doing electric bluegrass. Yeah. I was doing, uh, you know, I would start each show with, uh, hear me calling Bill Monroe, sweet heart of mine, Pete knew a fiddle player named Brantley Kearns,

who was a great harmony singer and fiddle player. I knew the drummer from the King B's, that named Jeff Donovan, who was a swingin'est guy, the best wrist, rim shot action ever. I said, I got this drummer, man, I'd like to get him to play drum, and Pete said, okay. And I got the bass player.

He's got him, JD Foster. So we put it together between the two of us. And we started playing these clubs. We started hiring in. And we would work. They would all say they wanted to hear hardcore country music until they got a dose of me for a weekend or two. It's like, that stuff you're doing, that hard country music,

we're thinking we might need something softer than that. Cause I was doing George Jones, you know, and we were doing it with a passion and with a rave up, you know, like I said, if you took late thirties, Bill Monroe or Jimmy Martin, you ask about Detroit, Jimmy Martin broke out of two wheeling West Virginia,

WVA, and then Detroit radio. He went up to the big Hillbilly station in Detroit and he had massive success up there on that radio station. So you're blasting the country. Yeah. And a guy named Bill Bentley comes out and sees, we meet in a driveway where I lived in a garage apartment. And we're standing in the driveway talking. He goes, well, what do you do? I said, well, I'm a singer song around trying to,

and he gets curious cause he's a, he's a writer for LA weekly. Yeah. I didn't know. Yeah. I'm meeting him in the driveway. Yeah. We just started shooting the shit and he says,

he says, what are you? I said, well, I'm doing this, I said, well, I'm playing the Palomino if you're interested, come out, I gave him some tickets, the Palomino, and he comes out and sees me and he's booking nights at the club lingerie in addition to being a writer for the weekly and a head publicist

over at Slash Records, because they have Los Lobos. They've just signed the blasters. The Americana thing. Yeah, before there's a term, right? over at Slash Records. Okay. Because they have Los Lobos. So that's the. They've just signed the blasters. The Americana thing. Yeah, before there's a term, right? And he drags Dave Alvin out to see me at the Palomino. Yeah.

And Dave Alvin said, he walked in and looked at Bill Bentley and went, this kid's got limousines in his future. And Dave took me under his wing. And. Great guy. Yeah. got limousines in his future and Dave took me under his wing and great guy yeah he allowed us to go to New York and open for the Blasters he let us go to Houston Texas and Austin and that's actually where I got signed by Warner the folks out of Nashville came there saw me open for the Blasters in Austin

and signed us but Bill Bentley championed me, wrote a gatefold piece in the fall of 84 on that album that, in the LA Weekly, that helped launch me to the Sun Times, the East Village Eye then wrote, picked up that LP, the six song version, the independent record. And that led to my being signed to Warner. But in the middle of all that, the scene had started happening, the cow punk quote unquote scene,

with the Knitters, the Aleph shoot of the X, but Maria McKee and Lone Justice. Yeah, and it was Los Crusados, which had been the plugs as a punk band. All these bands that were happening and we were on the bill with them. Was Rank and File around? Rank and File, that's who, yeah, Tony and Chip.

The Dills become Rank and File. So that's going on, we're sharing bills with all those bands, you know, on this hillbilly thing, Cowboy Hat, me and them, you know, and it was this moment. In fact, Michael Gilmore wrote about it in, I think he wrote a piece in the Herald Examiner about it, and then Todd Evert wrote about it.

But what's interesting is that like out of the Alejandro Escovedo, he, you know, he's in Austin, so he's still, he wrote, you know that record, his Gravity? No. Oh my God, it's one of the great records. But nonetheless, somehow or another, what's interesting about your career

is that you're playing straight up fucking balls to the wall country, and at that time, country's not really going in that direction. No. And then somehow or another, you sort of, there was a couple of guys, the old timers, that were kind of like George Strait and who were bringing it back.

Well, Ricky Skaggs. Ricky Skaggs. A fellow Kentucky and it had had huge commercial success in 84. He had come out of the hot band, Amy Lou's band. And he went back to Nashville and he launches and has a massive gold album with, I think it's 84. Yeah, 84 and 85. Those first two albums were Ricky and then George

had come out from Texas in 83, 83 at George Strait. And another guy that happens in that moment, neo-traditionalism, John Anderson. But it doesn't really have that moment until 86 with myself and then Steve Earle. Right. But. Guitar Town?

He did Guitar Town on the heels of guitars. Cadillacs have been out as an indie record. Right. And then we get signed and then Steve puts his out. But you have like solid country hits on all the three records. Well yeah, it starts, yeah. That begins.

And that separated me, you know, again then from the remnants of the scene here, because it took me in a different path. Funny enough, I was played on MTV until I had a country hit and then they didn't want anything to do it because I had a commercial country hit and they didn't want, they segregated us, you know, back out to, and, but VH1 still played me.

And I'll tell you who played me all the way through was Much Music in Toronto. Yeah. They never quit. I would be played right in rotation with U2, you know, or whatever. They didn't, you know. You had this whole style going. Yeah, there was a thing, a California thing, you know, that we were doing it. I guess, but it became like, I mean, like at this point, though, you're an established country.

Yeah. So we get here now to, you know, Hillman's cut song on your new record. And you also did the traditional, which one did you do on this one? Well, we covered the old Carter family. Yeah, the Carter family. Sonny Satterlite. They're literally, they're from,

30 miles from where I was born, Pikewood, Kentucky. Yeah. Just on the other side of the Virginia line, Clinch Mountain, Sunnyside, which people will know most famously used by the Coen brothers and Brother Roy Artie. As the soggy bottom boys were going into that

radio station to try and get some money for cutting a record. Old timey music, a flatbed truck goes by advertising for the new, the governor and he's run and they're doing the Carter family sunny side, keep on the sunny side always on. And I used it in my residency show in 2019. It's all ties to the album pre-COVID.

And in the first two months of 2020, as we do the residency for a second time, we're supposed to do it again later. But the world goes sideways. But that I work up as the first song that I do when I walk out, because it starts with a bunch of, it's a three hour show where I, can you believe I talk the whole time?

No. Yeah, yeah. Shocking. Shocking, stunned, that revelation. That I ramble on. But it was me going, because the radio channel had started by that point. So we took it as a residency. Because one of the agents, Jeff Frasco over at CAA,

heard the channel and goes, there's got to be. It's like a TV show or a show. Something with this channel. I said, maybe, I said maybe, you talking about me doing a residency over there? Yeah, I said let me go in and pitch this. So I did, it's all the deck, it starts in the 30s, but I start first in Bristol, Tennessee,

with modern commercial country. Ralph Peer goes from New York with the first portable recording devices down to Bristol, Tennessee and advertises, come one, come all, sing for me. And the two people that came the first week, he went on down to Carolina and set up again, but the two that came in that became modern country music were Jimmy Rogers. Yeah. became modern country music,

were Jimmy Rogers. Yeah. You know the. Singing Brakeman. Singing Brakeman, the Blue Yodeler, and the Carter family. AP, Mother Maybel. So you start there.

Yeah, I start there with this, to explain to the live audience, they see the beginning, the depression. They see how you get to California. How everybody gets to California, how that music gets to California, right? How all of us get to California. The Tom-Joed Road.

And I go out and begin that, and so I used this jacked up, stones-esque, I said to the band, I said, I got an idea about rethinking Sunnyside. And that's what's on the record. And I, so, come full circle, two years, I go, I'm gonna cut that, because we're now in the doldrums of everything we live through with the pandemic.

And I'm like, Sunnyside, keep on the Sunnyside, even in the height of the Depression, it's gone, came out of the Depression. So, it on the sunny side, even in the height of the depression, it came out of the depression. So it fit the record, but with an aggression. The whole record has a fucking drive. Even the slow ones have a drive, and it's like the difference in your production, like I once talked to Fogarty,

and I said, I got all those old fantasy records. Oh, yeah. And, you know, and those grooves are deep and they all sound clean as fuck. And, you know, everything is... Well, it's him producing. I know that. So I said to him, it's very funny, because I'm thinking about, like, even the opening of this new record, your record of Brighter Days.

Right. I said, well, how do you choose, how do you mix? And he goes, well, we're thinking of a AM radio speaker in a car. So when the guitar plays, you put that up front. When I'm singing, you put that up front. There's a funny story about Jimmy Martin's band this Bluegrass, when you put that up front,

when the guitar plays, you put that up. J.D. Crowe, I don't know if you know that name, but he had the New South, and he had a great bluegrass banjo player, and he was playing in Jimmy Martin's bluegrass band after Jimmy left. That's how Jimmy Martin replaced Flatt & Scruggs, or Lester Flatt, he's the singer. Then he leaves Bill, because he gets his designs on himself and, you know,

and never became an opera member because of that. Bill Monroe blocked that forever. And, but he's got his band and JD Crow's a plan banjo with him. And he says one day he says, he goes, something came up and they're standing there looking at each other. He goes, Jimmy, when you were singing, you're the star. He said, well, I'm a play in that banjo, I'm the fucking star. So Fogarty's saying that, yes.

You put that up. Well, that's how we use, when I'm old enough that when I was first ever in a recording studio, the little brown wood grain boxes, Oratones, you've seen them. The little cheapest six inch speaker. That's what you mixed on final because that's what it was gonna sound like, they would say, in a car. And that would be in the booth. Yeah, in the control room.

You'd sit there and go, that's what it's, the big speakers sound glorious, but you know how everybody's gonna hear it? On that, the shittiest, cheapest little. And that's why some records sound shitty on Good Systems. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, so you know what I mixed on this? What?

Well, we went from, Pete and I used to, I caught, we couldn't afford to go record at Capitol. Yeah. Until we got Simon Warner. We cut afford to go record at Capitol till we got Simon Warner. We cut the last four songs at Capitol. But- On this record? No, no, no, no, no.

The first album ever, Guitarist Cadillacs. But on the original six song LP, I could master. I had enough money to go master at Capitol. So we went in there, got an Eddie Schreier, and I went money to go master at Capitol. So I went in there, a guy named Eddie Schreier, and I went back to my little one room, as Dave Alvin said to somebody, he said, Dwight lives up there at the top of Argyle, above the freeway, down to Hollywood,

Franklin, yeah, Franklin and Argyle. He said he lives up there in the smallest apartment you ever saw in your life, because he came there and wanted to pick me up, we were gonna go to one of their gigs Yeah, he looked it was literally an eight by eight room He was a little step in and the the sink was in the kitchen I didn't have a bath they the toilet and the tub. Yeah, and that whole bat it was funky

But it was up in the hills. So I did I was peaceful. Yeah, this is 1984 and I go up there and I had The only thing I'd ever afforded myself, living out here and being able to buy as an accoutrement to my life was an old JVC receiver. It had the blue dial, remember the JVC, the little blue. And I bought a pretty good pair of Altech Lansing speakers. I could afford that much. They were 10 inch woofer tweeter.

So I had that set in an eight by eight room and I'm listening and I call up Pete and I go, hey man, there's a bass feedback on a couple of tracks on the lacquer. He goes, what? I went, yeah. He goes, that's Eddie Shriver. He's in the Capitol. I said, I don't know. I said, but it's just come over here.

So he drives over those He calls Eddie goes. Hey Dwight's got something goes. Where's he live? What the family incredulous? You know, yeah, I'm calling the engineer. Yeah a capital. Yeah, like I'm questioning his you know I've got a base feedback. So I'm sitting there I go no man I don't her day goes by to the, I'm listening to these tracks. Pete comes, he goes, Eddie, you better. So, you know, he's like, no, I haven't listened. I just listened to it again. I put it on and he goes, I've got a copy here. It's fine. Two days later, phone rings at Pete's. He goes, hey

man, it's Eddie. He said, holy shit. He goes, they just went down the hall. I can't remember the guy, the oldest engineer, mastering engineer at Capitol, is four bays down from, I don't know if you've ever been to Capitol Studios. You gotta go. If they open back up, go.

Because Les Paul designed the echo chambers. They're underneath the parking lot and the studio be it capitals, one of the greatest recording, if you go in there and burp, it sounds like a record, but you better be good because whatever you do, it's going to sound like it's on a record. Yeah.

And if it ain't good, it's going to sound like ain't good on a record. Yeah. So down the other end of the hall, there's an L shaped set of these, these, these mastering rooms. Yeah. Well, he said, I walked down and what was his name? I can't, anyway, he said, I went into his room to

hear something else and put one of my lacquers on. Holy shit. He said, man, my room hadn't been tuned in like four months. He said, I should have never let it go that long. He said, I have a bass frequency't been tuned in like four months. He said, I should have never let it go that long. He said, I have a bass frequency that's all out of whack. He said, get Dwight's record back, come on back. He said, I gotta rematch.

He said, I went in and sure enough, he's right. There's a frequency on two of the tracks. It's like, booooo. Came off my little out-tech Lansing speakers. So how did that impact how you recorded this one? So speakers, listening to. So what we started doing after that, well, when we started mixing,

I would go to the car and sit with a cassette tape with more CD, and with CDs, I would go sit with a CD and play back, because I'd catch things in my car that we wouldn't catch in the room. It sounded rockin' and great. David Leonard became the first pro mixer. Dusty Wakeman was our engineer on the first album and he would mix and that's what you used to do. Then Pete said by our third album, or actually the fourth album, he said, you know, I think we need to get one of these guys, and we did David that, that are just mixing engineers.

They're specialists. Yeah. It's almost like having a, you know, for medicine, a specialist comes in and he only does the snip here and that there and goes close them up. You know, a specialist and that's what mixing engineers had become. Chris Lord algae is one that they focus on mixing records and they're, and that's all, that's what they do.

They don't track anymore. They just, so we started that and with even, but David, I would catch stuff in my car that he wouldn't. So Chris Lord Algy and I started doing records together a few years ago. And he, when I got my last car, they quit putting CD players in them.

Yeah. I said, and I hadn't made a res between the last record now and Chris, we started getting ready to do this record. And he said, Hey, you get, we're gonna have to bring that. I had an old Corvette, an old seven Corvette that I drove for years.

Yeah. He goes, you're, you're going to get, he goes, we got a brown have to bring that. I had an old Corvette, an old seven Corvette that I drove for years. He goes, you're going to have to get, he goes, we got a brown, I'm serious. We're bringing that on a trailer. So you can sit in the parking lot and you can listen to them. I said, no, we don't need that. I said, the world doesn't live there anymore.

Chris, it's MP3s, Spotify, everybody's listening through earbuds. I, he goes, no, no, Chris, he had superstition. So we get there and I go in the first track that we mix and he didn't know. I don't know if you know, JBL puts out these Bluetooth speakers. Yeah. Well, there's a thing called a clip. It's the smallest of those.

Yeah. It's monorail. Yeah. It's a round, it looks like a donut and it clips on, you can just clip on your bike. Sure. I have one of those and I started listing on that next to the phone, which if you hold an iPhone 14 vertically, it's mono.

If you flip it horizontally, it becomes stereo. Yeah. So I'm listing and I don't tell him till about three mixes in that, cause he's got a ghetto black, we listen to that, the oratone, like the oratone thing. And he goes, so you're not listening,

you don't want to bring the car and the CD? I go, no, I'm okay, we're gonna be okay. And then I brought in, I showed him, I said, I've been listening on this on the way home. I'd leave you, I'd drive, and I'm giving you my notes. The next day I go in, the next day to mix again, he's got two of them, he's got them in, because he, when I started playing it that way before, he realized, wow, like they said, this is how the world's going to hear it. Like Fogarty said

to you, that's what they're going to hear. And the Beatles, if you listen to those menorah, the mono records and even the stair, it's like the vocal and, and Pete and I used to be, he said, well, you go to your rakers radio is going to compress it and the vocal gets louder. Yeah. But it's funny that John would say that, yeah. You know, and there's a, there isn't, I'm a huge, well, you mentioned credence. A lot of guys, I can tell you know credence. Yeah. See,, and there's a, there isn't, I'm a huge, well, you mentioned credence. A lot of guys I can tell, you know, credence.

Yeah. See I, I'm talking about the Blue Ridge Rangers album. How about that? Yeah. The solo record he did listen to that. Okay. But Fogarty when he breaks up over the

soul's ass, buying the other three out and they voted against him. Cause he knew, he said, I packed records for Fantasy. That's where he worked, that's how they got their deal. Because he worked in the record company, packing boxes and shipping. He was in the shipping department. So the Blue Rangers record?

So, well, he leaves when they break up in 73 and he goes and does a solo album. Look up John Furti, Blue Ridge Rangers. And it's him doing Merle Haggard, today I started loving her again, loving you again. He does working on a building, the old gospel thing, he's doing all this, he goes, Hank Laughlin, please help me, I'm falling in love with you.

It's Fogerty doing that and playing everything himself. That's where that begins, you know. One of the first records I ever had when I was a kid on a cassette that my parents left downstairs with the cassette player was Cosmos Factory. Cosmos Factory album. I became enamored. One of the albums I went and bought,

riding my bicycle down to Rinks, it was just a target and they had record. Dude, the guitar on Come Around the Bend. Oh, up around the bend. Oh my God. His tone and like you said that Royal Albert Hall stuff, there's an innocence to John and the band when they were interviewing them about being in Europe and they're looking around like, you know.

Strangers in a strange land. I just watched that recently, it just came out. But they are so like, they are just in it with each other. Yeah. Well a lot like the Beatles in that they're a bunch of guys, tough from Liverpool, who aren't Londonites. They're not the Stones, they're not sophisticated. No.

They're not guys that went to, I mean John went to art college but not sophisticated. They're not guys that went to, I mean John went to art college, but not really. I mean you got Ringo and George and the cats. So there's like, there is a love. When you watch Get Back, that eight hour documentary, the first hour and a half I was scared. I said, how long does this go on? I'm like a fly on the wall.

And then you realize what you're watching and you go, I've told audiences, said, look, if you want to see something great, you love music, watch Get Back. Get Back, I said, don't be afraid. It's eight hours that you'll never regret spending. And what you learn is they love music, but more than anything, they loved each other.

And, but they're magic. Like, I really think like my theory is, is that all those Hamburg years when they were jacked up, but also they're jacked up on speed and like they had a mind melt and it never went away. No, no. But so, and they're from a four block. They're like siblings. Yeah. It's, it's like, it's like Tom Furnity and John and the guys that they're all

from the East Bay. They're from within a four block radius. It's just one mine shit. And bands that go to New York, guys that meet each other in LA, you know, from all over, they're never locked like that. That's crazy. The only bands that are are siblings.

Yeah. And they can't last. So on this record, by doing that thing you were doing with those little speakers, because like every fuck like I noticed it immediately With the first that could the first guitar chord. I'm like, oh, I'm fucking in what the hell is that my casino? Holy shit, that's the beetle. That's the revolution. You don't the epiphone casino I saw John's over at at the rock hall. The guy took me in back. You saw his? Yeah. Oh my God, and he sanded that down from a sunburst.

That's the one that he and George are playing on the Budokan, the bootleg video. Oh really? Oh, those are those Epiphone's and he sanded his blonde. I know, it's great. And that's the famous, do we pass the audition on the rooftop. But like every song on the new record

just kind of comes right out and it's because of what you did. Thank you for saying that. I fucking loved it, man. I'm flattered that you would listen in that way. I hope folks realize, I love music because it's the only thing, well, one of the only things, not the only thing, well, one of

the only things, not the only thing, paintings can do it art art when it's executed. Well, can do it. Visual art, but also theatrical art, film art, storytelling can make us all understand how much we have in common, not what we are, you know, by the power mongers that want to separate it. Yeah.

But those that really understand and physicists are now discovering this more and more every day about the universality of our existence that wow, we all share space outside of ourselves. Somewhere other. Do you know what I mean? The music is that. Sure, it's magic.

So that's my goal, is that excitement that I felt. I get it every time, the band, you know, That's my goal is that excitement that I felt. I get it every time, you know, the band, you know, I become 13 in a garage, trying, struggling to be the guy I saw on TV, to be the guy that, Dave Edmonds, Dave Edmonds. Oh yeah, sure. Also T-Rex.

Oh yeah. What you're hearing on the. Con-con-con-con. I talked to David Bowie one time, he was, flattered me with just being a fan of stuff I was doing acting wise, we met each other, and he was, I said, let me ask, you're a fan of Mark Mullen?

Of course. Oh God. And he said, he says, it's not who does it first that gets all the credits, who does it second. Yeah. He said Mark, because it's the top of the Pops show where he and Elton John are sitting in with Mark. Elton's playing piano and they're doing Bang-A-Gong

with Mark. With Boland, yeah. But the first one of his was Hot Love. Ba da da da da da da. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The first one of his was Hot Love. But T-Rex, the guitar sound on Bang A Gong, Dave Edmonds, and then later Rock Pile, and The Pretenders, Dave produces the first, I think, three albums of The Pretenders, Dave Edmonds, and Nick Lowe with Elvis Costello. That whole thing.

I gravitated more immediately to New Wave because it was still, and The Clash. And I covered The Clash with Ralph Stanley, of all people, and Ralph didn't know The Clash, what we did, Train and Bane. Oh yeah. Because when I first heard that, I was living up above Hollywood Boulevard.

I thought that guitar sound at the beginning of this new record, it's like, it's just got that crunch. Well, that's my casino. That's the best, dude. But the thing is, every fucking song. Wide open heart. Yeah, every song just pops right out of the thing. Like every fucking one, dude.

Thank you for saying so, but it's just, it's an homage to everything that I loved about music. The stuff you and I have touched on, the ricochet of our musical memory. Yeah, great job. And it's, thank stuff you and I have touched on, the ricochet of our musical memory. Yeah, great job. And it's, thank you. And I appreciate you talking.

Well, I did talk, didn't I? Well, you did. I never got back to Alaska and I'm going to right now. Okay. You and I began with me asking you where you're from. Alaska, there's another Johnny Horton song you gotta hear. When it's springtime in Alaska, North to Alaska was the title track of the John Wayne movie.

Okay. But there's another song that came out of that film. Yeah. Because when it's springtime in Alaska, it's 40 below and there's a haunted female voice. He goes, whoo, when he says that, he goes, when he says that, he goes, I mushed from Fort Barron through

blizzard of snow. I'd been out prospecting for two years or so. Or more. Pulled into Fairbanks, the city was a boom. So I took a little stroll to the red dog saloon when I walked in the door the music was clear the prettiest voice I had heard in two years it was redheaded little who was singing a tune we did the Eskimo hop all around the

saloon and it's like the hook on it is when it's springtime in Alaska, it's 40 below. It sounds like you got to get up there. I probably do. Good talking. At some point. It's great to talk to you, Mark, and thanks for having me. You bet.

["Brighter Days"] There you go, did you learn something? Huh, did you learn something? Huh? Did you? Dwight Yoakam, the new album, which is awesome, Brighter Days is available now. Hang out for a minute. Folks, I'm going to be in a lot of places around the holidays, New Mexico, New York City, New Jersey, and I'm sure a lot of you are traveling too.

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and having your unused data rollover to the following month, every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply, details at fizz.ca. People, we've had some great stories told on WTF throughout the years, so we've been collecting them and putting together bonus episodes filled with some

of the best stories from past WTF guests. This week on The Full Marin, you can get the collection of epic failures with stories told by John Benjamin, Terry Gross, Chris Gethard, Natasha Leggero, and this one from Danny McBride. Okay, I lived here for, I managed to stay in for like two years and then I went through a really bad breakup with a girl I'd been dating

since college and then that threw me back. That was the first trip where I went back. Was she here with you? Yeah, she moved here with me. And then she started wearing slinkier clothes and everything just went downhill really fast. You were losing her. Yeah.

You were here to make it, she was here to find somebody who already made it. Yeah, and that's the thing too, when you move here as a young kid, you're right out of film school, you're 21 years old, and it's like, there's guys who are 28 and have some real money, and you're still kinda living on like a $25 a week,

sorta like, you know. And you realize that you're just there to provide them with new girlfriends. Yeah, exactly. You bring out your- Fell for the trap, right out of the gate. And so that was like the first, like hit the wall, like, geez, this is tough out here, this is brutal.

Heartbreak and no way in. Yeah. It's like you didn't have an agent or nothing, right? Oh, nothing. Couple ideas. Just a few shitty scripts that I came out with. And you're eating fat burgers and wondering how to make it. How many people were living in the house?

At that point, there were four of us. Yeah. Yeah, so that was no good. In an apartment in Burbank. And I can remember still the day when I found out that it was over with her. I was working at the Crocodile Cafe in Burbank, which is no longer there.

And I went into the manager and just told him, I'm like, I don't think I could do my shift today. I'm just, I don't know. My girlfriend just broke up with me. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, don't cry. And I start crying in front of this guy who doesn't give a shit. And he's just looking at me and he's like, all right, just get yourself together, like go take some time off. And he puts his hand out. I assume that he's going in for like a hug, but he wasn't. He was going for a handshake, and I'm just like hugging him crying with my apron from Crock-Shop Cafe. I remember just walking back to my apartment just like with my apron like wrapped up in like my white polo shirt with my name tag. Just like, fuck LA, I hate this out here. This is like the worst. There's so many bad points. There's so many beautifully poignant bad parts of that story.

The misjudged hug and then the walk back with the work clothes. To subscribe to the full Marin, go to the link in the episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF plus. And don't forget this episode is sponsored by better help. Picture this, you're curled up on the couch, it's cold outside, but you're cozy and ready for a perfect night in. Therapy can feel a bit like that. It's your comfort place where you replenish your energy. With BetterHelp, get matched with a therapist based on your needs and do it entirely online. It's designed to be convenient and suited to your

schedule. Find comfort this season with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com. Learn more and save 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com. And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by ACAST. And here's some classic guitar from the personal vault. I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man So So So So So Boomer lives. Monkey and the Fond of Cat Angels everywhere. Alright, okay, alright.