WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 785 - Ryan Adams

Episode Date: February 12, 2017

Singer-songwriter Ryan Adams knows there's a stark difference between the way he views the work throughout his career and the popular perception of it. Whether it's his years in Whiskeytown or his song New York, New York becoming a rallying cry after 9-11, Ryan tells Marc why history has created a different narrative of these events than what he experienced at the time and how that guides what he's doing today. 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.

It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category.

And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talked to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gate! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck

nicks what the fuck tuckians what's happening how's it going i'm mark Mark Maron. This is WTF. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. Take a deep breath. I hope everybody's hanging in, staying frosty, keeping alert, taking care of themselves, not falling in, trying to get up out of bed, have a life, enjoy things, maybe a chocolate bar, pet a dog, have fun with your kids. That's the thing with me. How's everybody doing? All right. Sorry, I got right off into it. What's happening? Everybody all right?

My chest has been tight. And, you know, I'm back. I'm back from vacation, from my relatively successful vacation where I was in a beautiful place. And about half the time I was actually in the beautiful place. The other half that time I was in my head in a very, very ugly place. But it's good to be back. It's good to be back at my house. It's good to be back at the garage. It's good to see my. It's good to be back at my house. It's good to be back at the garage. It's good to see my cats. Everybody is okay. Monkey, fine. Lafonda, good.

Buster Kitten is now sort of evolving into a fairly sensitive and unpredictable. I don't know what age would be comparable to a human, but he's no longer just crazy. He seems to be evolving a personality and requires affection occasionally. And he likes to eat things out of my bowl. Deaf Black Cat, the warrior spirit animal, is under the house and doing well and occasionally scaredy. Number two shows up out front. Big head from down the street pees on the door. So I came home to that.

And there are coyotes around. That's always a scary reality. And you can see it as a metaphor as well. When you see, when you're driving in your car and you see that lone coyote or maybe two or three of them and they stop and they look at you and you know that they're not necessarily going to attack you because that's not a coyote's way maybe they're presenting you with an issue of some kind but usually what they do is they scurry off into the dark and attack something smaller than them yes metaphors abound but there are some coyotes around hey so ryan adams is on the show today

and it's interesting the ryan adams and ryan adams music is that uh there's a few ryan adams records that i really liked and i listened to a lot but i never have gotten into the full catalog with a with full-on intensity the nerd t nerd-tensity that many people have with Ryan, people who love Ryan. But I always knew he was an interesting guy, and we talked for a nice long time, got to know each other. So getting back to the comedy stage, I got on stage last night over the weekend, been the first sets I'd done in three weeks. I brought everything that was in my heart and in my mind. A little bit of anger, a little bit of anxiety.

But ultimately, afterwards, there was a tremendous catharsis with people. And they came up to me and were very appreciative. We got to keep talking, man. God damn it. We just got to keep talking to each other. I got to keep talking, man. God damn it. We just got to keep talking to each other. I got a couple emails. Why not read a couple emails before I bring Ryan on? Listening with my son.

Hey, Mark, I've been a fan for a few years now. Listening to the conversations you have with people has been a large part of my continued hope and faith in creativity, art, and people. Thank you for that. Recently, I started listening to certain episodes with my son. He is 10, which may seem a little young to be listening, but I have been surprised at what he has picked up on and been interested in. He thought your bit about the

fuck it cookies was hilarious. Well, that's actually written for a 10-year-old. And that sparked a really interesting conversation about body insecurity and eating your feelings. We've talked about politics, art, religion, work ethic, and comedy, of course. When we started listening, always in the car and just the two of us, I told him, when it's just you and me, just us, you can talk to me about whatever the fuck you want. The truth is, I know in four or five years, he probably wouldn't want to spend much time with me, but my hope is we will have the car and WTF to talk about whatever. My hope is to keep a line of communication open in a space where I'm not just as old man. Thanks for what you do and the beautiful place your conversations hold in my life already and hopefully hold in the future.

Sean. Thank you, Sean. Sometimes I don't know if what I'm doing is, you know, standing up to the test of our our situations in life at this juncture in history. I'm happy to hear it. And this is another email that is, you know, it's heavy, but it's it's it's still along the lines of what we're talking about. You know, opposites attract. Hey, Mark, let me introduce myself. I'm Rita from Texas and a big fan. The truth is you and I could not be more different. I am a mother of three crazy boys and married to the handsome guy I've loved since 11th grade. I've never done a single drug and only started drinking, but really not much when I had children. I'm a medical provider and spend most of my days keeping my kids and patients alive, which can be challenging at times.

I don't swear too much and I really am not a cat fan, mostly due to allergies, but alas, it is true. Sorry, Boomer. In November, most of us felt deep sadness and fear when the election did not go as we had hoped. The sobering part is that I currently live 15 minutes from Mexico in the real Grand Valley of Texas. Every day I encounter those considered undesirable or bad. Every day I find love, grace, and kindness in a people soon to be ostracized and likely removed from our lovely area. Every day, I hear stories of heartache and struggle. Every day, I see faces of those unappreciated. However, your podcast gives me hope that somehow I can make a difference. The lessons I learn from those you interview are invaluable. Your interviews, your engagement, your curiosity, and your graciousness with each guest inspires me to find those things in the people I meet.

So thank you. I've been trying to do more kind things and share gratitude with others since the election, thus the inspiration for this letter. I hope it finds you well and rested from your vacation. Keep it up. Thanks again, Rita. Thank you, Rita. vacation. Keep it up. Thanks again, Rita. Thank you, Rita. I will keep it up. I will. So me and Ryan Adams, I liked Ryan Adams. We had common friends. I knew who he was. There was a couple of his records I listened to a lot. And then I realized there are people that love him more deeply than anything in the world and then he's got a very powerful following and people uh just

just crave everything Ryan Adams does all 900 of his records he also brought me back in touch with Mark Spitz uh uh the writer who uh I was friends with who who passed away a week or so ago like I just just before he passed away I was texting with him about Ryan because he had written a piece on Ryan and that was one of the sad sort of good things. I'm glad I had those few interactions with Mark who was feeling pretty good. So I really don't know what happened.

I have not heard yet. But the thing that put me over the top in terms of interviewing Ryan was I saw some little bit of footage of him playing an acoustic guitar at not even a music event, really. It looked like some other kind of event where someone handed him a guitar and he did a cover, an acoustic cover of my favorite Grateful Dead song. There's a few songs by the Grateful Dead that really moved me deeply. And he seemed to be very moved deeply by the song that he was playing that had a very big impact on my life.

And I'm thought, and that was what did I'm like, that guy clearly loves that song. And, uh, I love that song. So I'm going to talk to that guy and I'll talk to him about that. You'll,

you'll hear it in a second. So Ryan Adams, let's do it. Huh? Don't you think, uh, his 16th album, Ryan Adams, 16th full-length solo album, Prisoner, comes out this Friday, February 17th.

He's got a bunch of U.S. tour dates throughout the winter and spring. Go to paxamrecords.com for dates and cities. This is me talking to Ryan Adams. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, Ryan Adler. Will I die here? You'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Calgary is an opportunity rich city home to innovators, dreamers, disruptors and problem solvers. The city's visionaries are turning heads around the globe across all sectors each and every day.

They embody Calgary's DNA. A city that's innovative, inclusive, and creative. And they're helping put Calgary and our innovation ecosystem on the map as a place where people come to solve some of the world's greatest challenges. Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look at CalgaryEconomicDevelopment.com. Adams. You open for the stone? I did, actually, yeah.

And did you have any time with them? I did, in fact. Yeah? But I had been around them before. Yeah, when? So, strangely, my first time being around them, the first time that would make sense for me to say, oh, yeah, I was hanging out with them or close to them

was when I was in the mix process of Whiskey Town Strangers Almanac. So the first band? Yeah, so in the building, this is strange to say, but Don Was is across the hall from me mixing. The producer and bass player. Don Was. Yes. Yeah. The guy.

The Wizard of Was. The Was man. Yeah. So he's across the hall. Yeah. And I actually, I had met him, but we weren't the bros we are now. Yeah. Because he's my friend now.

Yeah. He's the guy I call, first guy I call to play bass. Yeah. First guy I call if I need a ride. He's just always there. Great guy. But at the time, I was actually freaking out because I loved Was Not Was, and I loved the way that he ran that band.

Yeah. And I loved how subtly, so out of control those records were. Yeah. You know, a lot of people might not realize, like, you know, Walk the Dinosaur is about nuclear war. Right.

Like, that's... Buried in there. How do you know that? Well, I knew before, but strangely, in a conversation with him, he was like, you're one of the few people that understood that. And I was like, yeah, the chorus is basically meant you're doing a dance out of when they would tell school children of my generation to get on the floor and get under your desk if a bomb went off, in case of a nuclear war. Yeah.

Which really would not probably help you in many ways. Sure. But so that's kind of how that song, I mean, I sort of saw the subtleties in that. Yeah. And they were incredible live and on TV when you'd see them at work. But so he's across the hall,

Keith and Charlie and Mick, everyone's in there. I think Bill had left by then. And then down the hall is Ethan Johns with Chris St chris stills who i ethan who would later do my first solo record right um weirdly and then gwen's kid yeah and then all the way down the hall on the other side was scott lit working on a liz fair album so what's weird is like all these people would later come together like two days ago two or three days ago like don was is playing bass at my studio liz fair is on guitar my friend nate is on drums two days ago a couple days ago yeah we've been working on her thing so that's how i originally met stones

and they were um lovely i got into a conversation with char Charlie Watts first about penny loafers. And I just said, you know, I walked in and I saw him and I was just like, okay. And I was like, okay, I told myself, just be cool. It's fine. Which it was. And I said, hey, you know, how's it going? How's your day? And he's like, you know, it's the usual waiting around.

And he's like, I went to buy a pair of penny loafers. He's like, it's the damnedest thing. He's like, I went to buy a pair of penny loafers. He's like, it's the damnedest thing. He's like, I collect penny loafers. I quite like them. And then he puts his foot up on this roll case. And he said, do you want to see the strangest thing? He's like, do you have a penny or a dime? And I said, yeah, totally. And I was like, that's probably all I have.

And I pulled it out. And he goes, he's like, penny won't actually fit in them and he's like and i don't understand where they he's like if i were to pull the stitch out i feel like it would be wrong like how do i know where it ends like he was getting deep about it about the penny about getting the penny in yeah and i just remember going like man i'm like talking to charlie watts about like penny loafers right now this is very unusual and we had the funniest conversation and he was super cool um keith was always very nice yeah i would run into him and i drank a lot in those days um i mean not in the day but at nighttime yeah we're mixing i get bored yeah and and strangely at that time i drank southern comfort which is not for the week of spirit it's

also easy going down though as far as the hard stuff goes that was a that was a popular one when i was in high school because you could get it down we used to do flaming shots in high school we'd fill the cap up set it on fire you mean like it feels like after a while like me like your mouth and throat have been like coated with like a bubble gum residue like a syrup yeah it's like you wake up you like you can't move your flips you're like what is happening it never happened southern comfort never happened again after high school for me yeah it was pretty gross but i guess i just i don't know for some reason it was the thing i thought i could handle did you grow up with it no i mean i grew up around people drinking and stuff i mean at different intervals something I found later

socially awkward therefore you know just drink and kind of took the edge off and I would see Keith like either because you could smoke in studios back then or go into the upstairs restroom and I'd run into him on the way down or way up and he's like

rush hour in here kid it's the first thing he ever said to me and I think I was just like honk honk i just said something funny back i just was disarmed yeah i smoked my first cigarette in 10 years with him wow i made a decision it was good i understand that decision strangely i really do i think i i think i understand it and and i i mean i had to. He's my fucking hero. He's really cool. I had really good conversations and times with him on that tour. He likes to laugh.

He likes to spin the yarn. He's very funny. Very funny. And he's also very... For any caricature that anyone thinks about this man, he is a deeply intellectual guy. Yeah, well, that was what everyone learned when that book came out, people who hadn't talked to him. Because having worshipped him for my whole life, you kind of got him in a box as this junkie dude who represents this lifestyle. But then you read that book, you're like, holy fuck. Yeah. He knows everything.

Yeah, I remember the first time I was having a conversation with him and he passed me a joint. And I remember my brain went into that freeze moment where you're like, you know, maybe you, maybe it's,

like imagine someone who their whole life they loved Meryl Streep or something. Yeah. They have pictures of her on their wall or whatever. And so they find themselves at a coffee shop and they're behind her and then they say something. That time starts to slow down and freeze just for the moment where their pleasant exchange happens. Yeah.

I mean, unless it's probably some asshole. Yeah, right, right. But I remember they were like i was it was before i went on it was the day and it was a big production he was like keith says come down to camp x-ray that was the name of his backstage yeah which is awesome yeah and uh i was like yeah right on and i went down and said hello i sat down and i remember he passed me this joint. Yeah. And time just went. And I looked at his fingers and I looked at my fingers going to grab it. And it was like, in my mind, I was imagining like the Sistine Chapel or whatever.

Yeah, two hands. The hand of God and the hand of man. Yeah. It's like, I was like, oh my God god the joint is being passed it was so crazy um that was like that was like one of the better ones but yeah i didn't want to open for them because i knew that um i like you know i knew enough to know that like for me you know i would do it for everyone else in the band to have the experience right but i knew that no one was going to care right because you were the opening band yeah and what's interesting was it was the first time i ever probably really went i know they don't care so therefore i actually

will try this new thing called i'm gonna try so freaking hard to see what i could do to get them to care yeah yeah i mean or to at least because i because it was i mean at the time whoever what kind of a brat kid i was or whatever i was thinking i was like well this means i could do anything i want and i don't want to phone it in in an arena of 20 000 people yeah some of those shows were really, really big. And did you get them to care? I think a few times. Yeah. I mean, I did. What'd you do, though?

What do you do? Do you push harder? Do you go deeper? What decisions are you making with your guitar and your mouth up there that's going to connect with an incoming crowd for a Rolling Stones show? I mean, I don't know. I think at the time, I don't remember each one. Was it a song choice

or was it an intensity choice? Well, the song choice was really stupid. Instead of playing songs that would have been recognizable to the audience in any way, because I believe that this tour would have been at the very end of the gold kind of tour time.

And that was your big record. I mean, people say that, but I don't remember it that way at all. Yeah. There was really, at the time, like there was no love. Yeah. Like it was not the thing it is,

but then it becomes a thing over time. In retrospect. I guess, like I guess it... You get your place. You know, as history goes, like as the history is written, that takes a place relative to the rest of your career like oh what about whiskey town it's it's made me question and be a different person specifically only in seeing the way that the past whether it

be a negative or a positive thing to the person yeah how it then can translate later as completely false and yet to that person or to the common knowledge of humans a complete inaccuracy right and there's no way to shift it but but yeah but also very interesting with music is very personal like you know whatever you may think or whatever the reality of it is you know how people look at that stuff in relation to the rest of your work you know you can't take that away from them no totally but i mean actual stories or specific things where you go like mythology yeah you go like well that i know that didn't happen happen but i guess i'm gonna let that ride because but it makes you think about i don't take it personally i think about in terms of world history i'm like oh cool so like wait like so what stuff really

happened or didn't happen right it makes you question like the way that things are handed down i think the day that you process that information and take it in uh take it into your heart or like really like know that that is true yeah that is a that is a day of change yeah for any human yeah and maybe it doesn't happen for some, but for those that it happens to, I think that it's from that fork in the road that only a little bit further down the road, once you've seen that, you have two more forks. And one of them is towards bitterness and the other is towards total acceptance that you're not really in control of the way information is.

And so you just ride with it. Well, that fork between bitterness and acceptance is is it can come at several junctures. You know what? Yeah, it keeps forking off. It does. You always come to that fork. And I guess it gets a little easier to not choose bitterness as the complete road you're on if you have some success under your belt or you feel a little bit better about yourself. But there's always the bitter rest stop.

Yeah. You don't have to get on that road, but you might as well, you can pull over. As a touring musician, I could attest that most of them are. For real. It's always a new experience. There's always a new insulting hat or someone's looking at you you know and you're in like your black sabbath like long sleeve cool bootleg t-shirt yeah and bunny slippers and there's some truck driver that's just like what the hell where are you from what is this clown

show it's like great you're like man it's the middle of the night i'm stoned i'm just trying to find the bathroom like great give me a break yeah totally well it's the middle of the night. I'm stoned. I'm just trying to find the bathroom. You're like, great. Give me a break. Yeah, totally. Well, it's weird because with my relationship with your music and what I've heard about you, I remember my first, like I had, what do you think of the record Easy Tiger? I mean, I've really. Because I listened to the shit out of that record. And for some reason, that was my introduction to you.

I don't know why i don't know where i got it or who told me to listen to it but that was the one at that point where i like i played it a lot and i was like this is a great record i have a manager that is really he is very smart. Yeah. And for my creative world, the way that I am creative and the way that I can sort of do my music and make so much of it and do whatever, it's a difficult thing for anyone to edit that, producer or not. Yeah.

Because the amount of information that's happening is a lot and it's hard to know. If you if you're like a tennis player, but your hobby is tennis. Yeah. It's hard to know when is the real game happening. Yeah. For some people. Usually there's a crowd there and some trophy at stake. Yeah.

And I had, Easy Tiger strangely would have been, I mean, I really am very sentimental about that record. And so many tracks happen around that record. So it was a strange thing to have experienced me making that record. But really that record is like, I feel like it's the culmination of like five days or something. Out of about a nine month to a year and a month recording session oh really where i made so much other stuff because i had um i had i had quit drinking and doing drugs around that time and i i didn't really um i didn't feel like going to like a rehab facility. Yeah. I later would learn a lot in therapy about things and why and all this different stuff and how it works.

Related to what, addiction? I suppose so, yeah. I mean, I don't, although I completely and totally would choose to like, you know, like drink and smoke cigarettes and like do some drugs. It was usually in the application of doing music for a longer period of time. You felt like it was a tool? Yes, exactly.

Yeah. I mean, very rarely was it a social thing. It was enriched for me, I think, by that feeling spaced out or whatever. But it all stopped around that time. Easy Tiger? Yeah, before it. So the way I did it was I just went in the studio for a year, basically.

I just went every day, and I made whatever was on the top of my head, and the outcome of that was I was completely hyperactive and spastic, and I had no idea because I wasn't hung over and i wasn't like you know feeling worn out from having been up till seven in the morning whatever it was i just was a different energy yeah which sort of turned into like oh my god and i had all this stuff to say and i said it all and what's really weird is at the very end of it like i think a

couple of maybe elegant things came out because I was completely exhausted of making fake soundtracks for something that didn't exist and bad hip-hop stuff that I didn't know what I was doing or metal or who knows what I was doing there. Well, I mean, but that's sort of like part of your whole, the mystery of you is that you sort of move through all these different forms of music and that you seem to have this never

ending recesses in your soul to express yourself through whatever you impulsively feel musically. Which I think is how it should be. Yeah. You know, it's not for me to know how to create that thing where you want someone

to want the next thing to what you want to create like not supply and demand but you want things to be spaced out in a way where people have time to digest the information and you have a time to like express it on a tour and then maybe there's a lull and then you and then you give people a new chapter for me it was it was like i just lived music it's just what it was a safe place for me to go and it was where i wanted to be when did that start ever since i got a guitar at 16 15 years old i always just played where'd you come from jacksonville north carolina yeah yeah so there really wasn't i mean most of my friends were either like dying or getting arrested. For what?

And from what? Just this or that? Drugs, skateboarding, getting wasted. Yeah. Wrecking their car. Who fucking knows? Who'd you grow up with? Like what was the family situation?

I grew up with my brother and sister and my mom, but then kind of spent most of my time with my grandparents, as much as I could, until eventually I basically was sort of inseparable from them it just was the right vibe for me what why what was going on with your mom i mean it wasn't so much as hers it was um you know this is the part that's interesting i feel some there are some days now that my grandmother's passed my g-ma and my papa as i would call them but um you know i i mean for at this chapter of my life anyway and who knows by the end what i'll say but i could almost say that one of the things i think I was here this time for if there are many times yeah or even if it's just once it was to be with them it was to hang out with them with your grandparents yeah I've I knew them I died we were so funny and my grandfather he was so funny and like a like a

he was like a a prankster yeah he's the kind of guy that like you know re-gifts you the same thing three times you can't figure out how it's because he stole the thing back and put it back in the wrapper and like like you know and like hide behind doors and like you know and he's always up for a journey and then he got sick with emphysema and um they approximated that he maybe would have like seven months to a year to live and he lived seven years about seven years and a half maybe a little more after he got diagnosed yeah because he was like i feel like his position and i'm certain he said it at least once was he's like i'm not going anywhere until the braves win the world series i remember literally looking at him and going like

you're gonna live forever because it doesn't look good right now. And like, and you know, yeah, we would have that conversation and you would crack up. And then like, I, I loved listening to his stories.

He was in world war two and, um, he saw a lot of his friends, people he was really close with die. Yeah. And he was letting a lot of stuff go in those last years and i was there for it i i don't know why i should have been like going like out to go like what like where are the girls like where's a boob i should have been going to do what the mischievous young man does you were like 15 i

mean well he got sick when i was 9, 10, something like that. And your mom lives close by? Yeah, a couple of streets down. Oh, okay. So it was just easy to kind of stay with them. And also, she had her hands full, and we didn't particularly get along. No? No.

And you have a brother and a sister? Yeah, older brother, younger sister. So the older brother element, do you how'd he end up he's a very math minded person oh yeah interesting because i can't do math but i could write structured songs and all this stuff but he could do a complex math equations just in his head yeah it's he's pretty interesting but he grew up loving the scorpions and ozzy and I thank him for that. Because he made sure that I had a copy of Diary of a Madman. So I was like, cool, thank you.

Thanks for that, which is awesome. And my sister is really smart. And she, I think, the way that my brother was kind of like, I would say, authentic nerd. And the way I was sort of skate punk nerd maybe like nerd and awkwardness or whatever or just in what i you know i was like reading reader's digest and watching like doctor who the fourth doctor and dark shadows like that's who i was from as far as i can remember um and that's because we had the University of North Carolina in Wilmington that was near enough that PBS was awesome.

Yeah. Whoever was programming it was like a huge stoner because it was the weirdest stuff I ever seen. And so I was like into that. And my sister was maybe the more, I think, in a good way, the most well-adjusted and interested in the contemporary life of high school and life. And you and your brother were sort of off the grid a little.

Yeah. Like, I mean, I, I think I had that. I mean, I think it was probably looking back. I,

I can imagine them thinking like, wow, I was always like drawing or writing poetry or reading stuff or asking these deep questions or spending time with Papaw, who told me lots of really detailed, incredible stories. And my grandmother, there will never be someone like that. She was an unbelievable person. You could not get her down.

Yeah. Yeah. And she just crocheted blankets and watched TV. And like, which is unbelievable. And she made lemon pound cake. Yeah. And she would like, even though they lived right at the limit of just,

I mean, I used to think that house was so nice and big and like and she had like a big old black comet yeah car you know and but i used to think that they had so much stuff but when i actually went back after she passed i was like wow that this was a really minimal yeah environment and but she was always crocheting blankets yeah and making cakes and then we would get in the car and she'd either drop them off at her church for the registry of people in need. Or she would somehow find people who really needed a hand. Or a cake. Well, she would go grocery shopping and get canned goods and then either bring them a cake or a blanket.

Yeah. And I would see that in real time. I'd be in the car. I would always go with cake or a blanket. Yeah. And I would see that in real time. I'd be in the car. I would always go with her on the adventures. Yeah. And I'd be like, what just happened? And she's like, well, I just picked up some stuff for our friends. And I was like, oh, okay.

I was like, well, who are they? And she goes, oh, I don't know. And then she would turn on the radio. And then we would both listen to some cool classic song. And then we've read a stoplight. She used to go along with the drums, like whatever song it was, she would make that noise.

Yeah. That's my vivid memory of just not just music, but like how all that time was. Yeah. And when, and what was your mom doing? Um, I don't know.

I don't know. And where was your mom doing? I don't know. I don't know. And where was your dad? My dad was building houses. Yeah. Yeah, he's a general contractor, and he does a lot of really cool cabinetry stuff. Still? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, he's an interesting guy. You have a relationship with him? I do now, yeah. And I did someone at the time. Yeah. Yeah. He's an interesting guy. You have a relationship with him? I do now. Yeah. And I did someone at the time. Yeah. My immediate parental history is somewhat strange in that it was kind of estranged. Yeah.

Kind of. It just didn't really work for me. And it's like, it's so funny too because it's like i sometimes feel like it's sort of like beetlejuice it's like i don't want to say it yeah like i don't even like to it's like i'll let it pass my mind once then i'll be like yeah yeah what the fact that it was estranged just in general yeah yeah it's like i don't know yeah so when did you when did you get the first guitar 16 yeah i traded my skateboard for a guitar. Were you like a wild skateboarder, like pools and shit?

Yeah, that was mostly what I could do. It was in the beginning of when Santa Monica Airlines and Santa Cruz, those companies, and those skaters started to, the nose of the skateboard got a little bigger. And you'd see, i would see my friends at first we were carving grinds big ollies going fast going to pools that were drained and skating them bowls yeah and just as i was getting out of it is when kick flips and like shove-its and all that stuff started happening yeah which is fine but i remember thinking like wow i'm like watching my friend he's like spending four hours like trying to land this double kickflip over this little hump at like the bank when it was closed.

And I was just like, I just really want to go fast and like catch like some like, you know, do like a big ollie and do some gnarly grab and get out of it before I'm like shredded on the pavement. Right. Or just grind stuff. And it was just how I was. Yeah. And it was at that point i was like well like maybe i'm more about ramp skating but i didn't have a car and there wasn't really a pool to skate except for from this sort of semi-abandoned hotel at the edge of our

neighborhood which i still would skate yeah and it was almost unskatable but man i made it skatable i would just loosen the trucks up enough and just i made it work if there If there was water in the bottom of the thing, like I didn't care. I was just like, I'm going to deal with it. I should have known something was weird early on. And then, but it made sense. But I used to get like dizzy spells, but I also would get really, I would get discombobulated if I tried to skate backwards. Yeah. get discombobulated if i tried to skate backwards yeah because you see a lot of skaters like they go up and um they'll go to the lip of the skateboard yeah and then they put the skateboard

over the top yeah and they keep it there for a second yeah and then um then they go backwards yeah and they roll down the transition backwards just by looking the other way and then do a trick from backwards to spinning around right the only couple of times i tried to do that were brutal they were like i mean that was like some stuff where you i just was like where where am i and then i just like slam as hard as i could and i'm like was that a moment and then i like try like kind of a smaller version of that and i'm like oh wow okay cool so i cannot bakey anything cannot go backwards right which is really interesting was at the end of the skating career that realization no i mean i still i still skate when i'm on tour i skate around the venues

yeah i like i enjoy it and if i can find a park where i could really carve it up it's great and so what was the music going on i mean what, what was it like outside of your brother's records? How do you get into the music? Well, the first thing I ever did was I got the guitar. I really picked up, I think it was Half a Hollow or something where I was like, there might be a picture. I know there's a picture of Andy Rourke playing his bass. And then there's a picture maybe of Johnny in the corner with a guitar. But for certain, there was a picture maybe of johnny in the corner with a guitar but for certain there

was a black sabbath record or two maybe dio era sabbath yeah where you could see uh tony omi playing right and um and i and because i went to play the guitar and it didn't feel right and i was like i'm not making the sound so it's like what is happening and i just so i looked at the pictures and i was like because i was like the guitar must be i just so i looked at the pictures and i was like because i was like the guitar must be broken and then i looked at the pictures like wait they're really pressed it's he's really pressing down yeah i was like that has to be what these silver things are right and i really pressed down and i hit the note and i'm like oh and then i was like well it doesn't sound right the way it's tuned it was probably too normal right and i was like so that must be wrong because this doesn't sound right the way it's tuned. It was probably tuned normal. Right. And I was like, so that must be wrong

because this doesn't sound like anything on there. So I detuned the E string and I detuned the second string a little bit. And then the high strings, I think I detuned one. Who knows what the tuning was? And I went, wow, now it sounds good open. And instantly figured out if I slid my finger up on the lower strings

at different places, I could instantly make what sounded like bar chords yeah with the ringing part open right so the this is the first hour so at the end of the first hour i was like oh great and i wrote a song no words no words right away there's a little boombox cassette somewhere of it i have like in a big thing of all my cassettes where i'm just basically going like oh wow i can do this and so i just wrote a song i don't remember what it's called i don't remember the contents because as soon as i was done with that one i wrote another one right away and my mind was like i sound just this is like oh my god i basically sound you know like jakey lee right now

but i didn't sound like jakey lee at all i yeah i'm george lynch this is amazing and you know like and so that's the beginning like and and it just was like that every day and with no guidance no man there was nobody to tell me anything but how do you learn how to play guitar that's it i just tuned it down and then i just started to figure out the low like i figured out kind of how that stuff would work yeah and then i would also figure out later quickly i was like okay what combinations work and luckily the middle some of the middle strings were still in regular tuning so a normal bar chord um seemed obvious to me also from pictures yeah and i thought like i was like it doesn't i was like i'll try it on the lower

ones but if this is the tuning everyone's using they sound weird here but it's cool and later on pictures yeah and i thought like i was like it doesn't i was like i'll try it on the lower ones but if this is the tuning everyone's using they sound weird here but it's cool and later on i would find out that like you could kind of do like by just moving that one yeah but in the middle i would slide up with the drone yeah it all kind of ended up sounding a little bit like i don't know like by the time i met and played with the first musician which was not long after that it probably sounded like surf rock and sonic youth mixed a little bit like because

because you figured out but you had this noise at the end well I would never play that even though I knew what that was it was I was mostly trying to get stuff to sound kind of dissonant like dissonant and cool like I remember thinking like i really want this like i loved who's could do and and i loved like driving and crying and i

loved like rem and i loved um mostly metal but i i knew weirdly though i didn't want to play metal which i don't know how i don't know how i knew that yeah i think something in me went you stayed up to watch the cowboy junkies the other night on snl yeah did that yeah so like as metal as you are you that's probably not who you are on the guitar your true self comes out on guitar i think i think that's true yeah and saying the cowboy junkies resonated oh man big time but metal was metal satisfying to listen to but maybe it was not where obviously it wasn't where your heart was going to express itself i mean i make a lot of it at soundcheck and i

definitely do it in my own studio tons and and it's fun and i can see the complexities of had i committed to it i think i would have eventually broke through and it would have had a lot of parts of breakdowns of clean arpeggiations into heavy riffs yeah but it doesn't stick with me the same way as like maybe trying to sort of like trying to stumble onto a song i sort of heard it echoing from far away and i called it through the guitar and like the end let it kind of become a thing and that's how you write i think it's a little bit like it's not automatic writing but it's a form of it like I mostly write by I'll wait until I have a couple of friends around like a bass player, drummer. And I'll just in the moment, like play some chords that feel expressive to me.

I mean, the new record Prisoner is just me and my best friend Johnny T in New York because I couldn't be here for a while. I mean, I could be here for a while, but I didn't want to be here for a while. Like I was going through a divorce like it's it takes a minute it's just life it's not a big deal recently yeah i mean to go make new music i kind of wanted i wanted to go back to new york where i had lived before and um uh before i lived in la and and and be with my best friend and be a studio studio. Just driving down Sunset was weird. So how do you move from these open tunings, half Sonic Youth, half Surf,

into what was the experience with Cowboy Junkies? That sounds like it was a cathartic sort of moment. There was a window there. Yeah. I mean, I remember seeing the Sweet Jane video and being mystified. That's a great song. Yeah. I mean, I knew it was a Velvet Underground song.

Yeah. But what they were doing at that time, there was a couple of bands that really interested me, specifically Galaxy 500. I was waiting for On Fire to come come out it was one of the big records of my life and i believe the same issue or somewhere around the same time galaxy 500 on fire was getting a great review at the same time that there was a daydream nation sonic youth um review yeah in the rolling stone and i was like oh gosh, there's like two huge records coming out that I want. Yeah. So once I heard Galaxy 500, and they were so slow and so mesmerizing,

it was easy for me to sort of, from Cowboy Junkies to Galaxy 500, there was something about that idea of like music that's slow is really calling me but music that's slow and it sort of feels effortless and there's like this stuff passing me by it just really made sense yeah um and i loved sonic youth sister which also was a very weird record and strangely enough when i went to the record bar in the mall which i used to skate to like i skateboarded to go get the first Danzig solo record the day it came out. I was so stoked, you know?

Like I always used to smell the cassette. I'm like, oh, I could smell it. It's like fresh. It just came off the printer like an idiot, you know? And like, and it was a pretty far away place to skate to get a cassette. But those days really were beautiful because i i was sort of fetishizing records and getting a record and and then examining all the things that it that it

were in there yeah so by the time actually that i'd had a couple of songs on this tuning um i go to the the record store and for some reason you're different. You've played guitar or I was. Yeah. And I noticed that the guy, one of the guys behind the desk and then this other guy

that worked there that looked kind of like he, like a, like he could have been in social distortion but if they were clearly from North Carolina, if you could put that

in your mind. Yeah. I was like, these guys are like looking at me in a funny way and I guess I was always asking questions

about the SST records if they had certain records and they there might have been an ad up that said like there's like there is a show in town and um and that they were looking for other musicians and and he was like yeah he's like i see you're always looking at the sonic youth stuff and you buy like some cool stuff here and i was like right on yeah and he's like uh I see you're always looking at the Sonic Youth stuff, and you buy some cool stuff here. And I was like, right on. Yeah. And he was like, do you play music? And I was like, well, I was like, yeah, I play guitar.

He's like, you play guitar? I was like, yeah, I play guitar. And he's like, well, what's the vibe? And I said, I don't know. I was like, I think it sounds like docking and sonic youth a little bit or something yeah i made some reference the wig was completely off base yeah and i remember he was like right away he was like man we need to jam he's like he's like what are you doing later and i'm like what you mean like today he's like yeah um i was like i don't know like i think

i'm going i don't remember what the thing was but he was like cool well tomorrow i have this friend that plays drums and you meet up at like i can meet you at like three o'clock yeah and we'll go jam yeah so i was like okay cool and i told him the street corner to meet me at and like i went there with the guitar i got in the van we drove out to this rehearsal place and then the drummer guy it was really cool looking they had a microphones and a pa and a four track and this big ass drum set and sure enough the guy that walks in that's the drummer, his name is Alan Midgett. And he was the guy who lived behind my grandmother's house that had a half pipe that I could never skate, that I grew up hearing punk rock coming out of a boombox from. And I wanted them to skate because I loved watching them skate from an early age. So I would even go over and try to sweep the ramp thinking it would summon them.

And he'd be like, get out of my yard, brat. And I used to play like touch football. Like, I mean, we call it touch football, but it was like the cruelest, harshest form of football ever with no helmets, like out in the court, this like cul-de-sac in front of my grandma's house. And I couldn't believe that it was that guy. Like, is this guy nuisance?

I could remember. And he at this point was like, had dreadlocks grandma's house and i couldn't believe that it was that guy like is this guy nuisance i could remember and he at this point was like had dreadlocks and he was working at like a surf shop and uh and he came in and he was like what are you doing here geek i was like oh man and i showed him the song and i think he realized right away um i was like, so this is what I have. I could tell right away that he didn't want to tell me that the guitar was not in a standard tuning. Yeah. Because he thought you knew something. He didn't tell me for a long time, which is really weird.

But I could tell that he was marking to know kind of where notes were. Yeah. Because he'd be like, here, just tune it all up so it sounds good with this note. It would be like his G or his D or whatever. He's trying to get you to tune your guitar. Yeah, basically, but keep it tuning the way it was. Right.

But I showed him the first song. He was like, no way. And we started playing it right away. And as we're jamming it, I remember like right in the middle of the jam, and I kind of, I don't know if I was mumbling some words into the pa but um mostly it was just instrumental but it sounded so cool like the chorus was cool and and i went into this improv part i was so into it was like like high up on the thing but right before that moment that's the first note i ever recorded really with the band is he must have been

like oh and he like reaches over lunges over and hits record on the four track yeah and he gets that moment on tape the whole session and i have that tape and you can hear the thing go have that tape and you can hear the thing go the very first and then the riff oh like the whole first riff so like i have my first moment with these guys who would be like my best friends and my heroes and like like my you know your first thing yeah it's on it's on a cassette it's so cool and it sounds still incredible it sounds like the just the energy is so insane well it's all like it's on fire it's your first time playing with people yeah and and they really responded i think because i think a lot of the stuff that they probably a lot of the guitar players they were finding i think were probably either really metal but didn't have a lot of their own ideas right or wanted to just do covers

and also there's that time where where you don't know enough to be uh cynical or doubting like you're just in it yeah i mean that's eventually what you always try to get back to i would imagine I mean, that's eventually what you always try to get back to, I would imagine. Yeah, absolutely. And like you only knew these four things, so you were going to get everything you could get out of them once the vibe kicked in. True. Yeah. I mean, I think it's funny.

I think I've stayed in that place for a long time. How long did you play with those guys? Over a year. Yeah. I mean, we played until we couldn't play anymore. Alan and I became very tight. He stayed my friend his whole life, and he went through a lot of stuff before he died,

which was just only a couple years ago, around the time that I was going through the first stages of a divorce and stuff, Alan passed away. It was brutal, very brutal. But yeah, he always – it's funny. He kind of loved the Cowboy Junkies, and he loved the idea of playing mellower stuff as well. That's kind of how our first band split into two and that's when i

think i started to go like okay cool what are songs right and how do you land on the band whiskey town how do you land on going back to that the sort of american roots music well i moved to raleigh eventually from jacksonville yeah because because I couldn't stay there anymore. I just, I had sort of outgrown it. And before I had moved, I started a band with my friend Kevin Doddridge who taught me how to play a regular tuned guitar. Yeah. Because I used to be like, God, I have to stretch my fingers. Like, as far as I'll go to hit this chord and he'll go.

And he was the first guy to go, Ryan, you know that that's just a g chord i'm like what are you talking about you're like bubble boy i guess so and i remember going like why did nobody tell me this and they're like because it sounded cool like we didn't we i don't like who's to say that that's right anyway it could change any day like we were so isolated like it could change like that could become what people do later and like that's not real like come on like i don't know like i'm pretty sure like g and c and d are established it's gonna stay there there's books that talk about it and i was like wow like d chords feel so cool yeah um i moved to raleigh um i got two jobs i couldn't really find a decent job yeah uh which was hard i lived in like kind of

like a sort of one room temporary kind of i don't know what people would call it now like i mean there were definitely people there that were probably like i don't know like doing a lot of drugs and stuff and um i was walking down the street yeah this this guy named Skillet Gilmore, he goes, hey, man, I heard you're looking to start a new band. Maybe it sounds like some Cowboy Junkie stuff. And I was like, how do you know? And he goes, I don't know, people talk.

It's weird. He's like, come inside for a beer. And I did, and I told him, I was like, well, I might have to leave town because I'm out of money, I don't have a job, but i really want to do it he's like i'll give you a job you could work here and he had just taken over running that place yeah and he was a drummer and he was really cool and i said yes and like i ended up you know um we ended up right away like finding different people to be in the band like straight out of the bat yeah i think by that night we basically had most of the lineup just from speculation yeah they were

all around yeah there were people that someone else knew or like well i know this person that plays violin that could play some fiddle who sings she's really good yeah and they're like oh what about steve steve could play bass and like i was like, wow, this is happening very fast. And by the end of the evening, we were all pretty loaded. But we had basically kind of more or less formulated what we were going to do. And then you started working, playing. Yeah, I mean, we didn't really play with some of those principal characters

until a bit later on. And originally, Skillet, myself, and this other guy named brian we kind of tried a three piece for a minute that kind of sounded like the gun club while we were sort of still trying to set up stuff with the band but i remember the first time um all five of us ever played and it was actually really good yeah like we just kind of like we just sort of we thought we played like what we thought was a country song and I knew it didn't sound like that. Yeah. And mutually, I think we all kind of looked around and were like, wow, this is accidentally kind of works.

Right. In a sort of shitty, we don't have a bridge kind of way. And that was the beginning of the sound. That definitely, I mean, it never variated. It always stayed kind of crappy. Yeah. What can we do with this which is pretty cool throughout the entire career of Whiskey Town

yeah I mean I think I mean I think that the only difference would be by the time we made that second record Jim Scott really tried to find a bigger sound in us and he did but it wasn't something that we could reproduce live right and then the third record

with Ethan Johns was so experimental that yeah it was only Caitlin and I left that it really was just like a soft transition into being solo what happens after whiskey town you build a pretty good following with whiskey town right no I think history is wrong about whiskey town in fact most of what happened at whiskey in whiskey town and even the tours and stuff yeah they were pretty terrible yeah i mean they were like replacements terrible no i no i mean i've read that book and i but they they were really truly talented yeah and i'm not saying that i am i'm not being i'm not saying that i have no talent.

Right. But I'm saying that I cannot imagine having that degree of talent. Right. That that band, let alone just Tommy and Paul have. Yeah. It's unbelievable. But for me, being in whiskey town felt like okay cool we started kind of this country thing we kind of went there and it makes sense but we never could

really like i wasn't really applying myself and didn't understand how songcraft worked completely although i was beginning to right and there are certainly some really cool things on the first record that i i thought oh i'm breaking through i'm understanding yeah um i used to spend a lot it's the first time i would spend time like i'd go get like a cheap bottle of whiskey and like a couple of beers go back to my like one room you know like place like right you know like on the main drag and holly and listen to records and go wow what happens in this bridge like here's this bridge like um and and i would sort of just smoke cigarettes and think about how it all like how all how songs worked yeah so it was just a that's how that stuff happened but knowing how to play live and being comfortable and playing gigs,

like, I mean, some of those shows were the worst things that could have ever been. But they weren't glamorously bad. They were like, look over and, like, Caitlin in my band is crying. And because I'm unaware, totally fucked up I am. And maybe someone else in the band is. And I'm like, wow like wow like did we just play that song in like 30 seconds and i go like maybe we just ended that song for a verse i thought it

was over and like and like after a couple of times of that you just see someone crying you're like wow this is terrible someone on stage like the music is making them cry and they're not moved like stuff like that i mean i mean i was very young i mean it's the same age that anybody would be when they're staying up all night right in college and right partying and right so once that fizzles out and you start to work solo what changed you know it's a very interesting thing um you know it's a very interesting thing um whiskey town was still together when i moved to new york city the first time and i only left for us for a minute just long enough to get stuff together and to go back but i lived in new york city and i lived with my girlfriend and um we had a couple of black cats and like um things were great and she worked in the music industry and um i was sort of

waiting to see what would happen with my band um because we had done the strangers almanac tour stuff and i was still kind of waiting like okay like when is this next record that i had done in woodstock with ethan gonna come out and are we gonna tour that was the odd record with just you and caitlin mostly yeah it was a record called pneumonia yeah yeah which is a not great album title but i mean like i don't know um so and i remember she came home one day and she said this thing is happening with the music industry and it's really bad i was like what do you mean she's like well this company is going to buy a lot of the other companies and i think everybody's going to be affected and maybe even my job she's like you should find out about what's happening there's i'm like no it'll never happen i'm fine sure enough it basically put my album and outpost records it put it into a freeze where i couldn't leave but i couldn't release that record

and i didn't know what to do pneumonia yeah and so um you know what really sucks is living in new york city and being younger and the pressure of like how do we pay the rent and um like how do we get to the next step and like what are we are we going to do? Yeah. It really, it was really hardcore. It was the first time I ever felt that pressure as an adult to go like, oh my God, like my job is play music and now I'm actually going to, I have to figure out a way to provide. Yeah. So. For yourself.

Yeah. And I couldn't, I couldn't, there wasn't, I mean, no matter what, my friend Jesse Mallon at the time was like, come down to Niagara and you could just DJ for a couple hours. They'll give you some money. And, but I realized at some point they were just being nice. They knew it was falling apart for me. Yeah. Um.

Were you using drugs? No, not, I mean, occasionally. Yeah. But, but I wasn't, um, at that point, like I would do some if they were around. Right. But I wasn't, um, I wasn't holding. Yeah. Um, we would drink a lot, but usually for free. we knew somebody that was a bartender right some bar yeah you know how it is

yeah and so somebody's got a little bit of blow or something you do a little bit but it was i wasn't like rolling you know yeah uh so but i think what led to heartbreaker was the very humbling thing was Amy and I are very much connected. Well, we always will be. And to this day, we still are. But we just had a kinship and a vibe and a mutual sort of dream. And the financial aspect of what happened happened with that i guess it was seagram's bought geffen or whatever they did or however whatever that thing that changed around uh the late 90s happened that really it broke it broke my heart it broke her heart it broke us a

little bit she was she's from jersey so she was going to move back for a minute, um, to figure her stuff out. And I didn't have anywhere to go. So I had to call someone that I knew in Raleigh, North Carolina. And of course my next step was to call Alan and say like, man, like the, it's falling apart up here.

I'm coming back. Yeah. And most people are like, he'll never move back to Jacksonville. And fuck if I didn't, I like a friend picked me up and I remember the last day in the apartment yeah and most people are like he'll never move back to jacksonville and fuck if i didn't i like a friend picked me up and i remember the last day in the apartment and i left the stuff that i couldn't take with me and i took some stuff with me and um we got in the van and we headed south

and i remember seeing the city get smaller and smaller out the back window yeah and man that was out the back window yeah and man that was i can think of that moment right now it was so brutal it was like like a failure moment oh man for me it was like that's it that there went that was my time that was my time as a musician right i i was like i'm gonna probably go back into the construction business because I was a great plumber. Yeah. Building new plumbing, I'm very good at it. And roofing, I was always good at roofing. Yeah.

I wouldn't be good now. I would get dizzy and kill myself on accident. But, you know, when I was younger, I was always fine to be out in the cold and the cold doesn't bother me. Were you working for your dad? No, but my dad taught me the trades a little bit when he could so that I could go get a job for anybody. And he would always know a contact or something that I could go get on some crew.

Yeah, yeah. It would always be pretty hardcore. I mean, it wouldn't be like me and some other punks. It was like me and some grizzled dudes that crawled out of like some i don't know where yeah like but you know it was a living it was fine and uh so i thought i was done yeah i got back to north carolina and um you know it was pretty kind of it was a really long sad weird time like i just i was sleeping on couches um for a minute partying because i was back in town people were happy to see me yeah inside me i was like i failed yeah i failed i'm

not in a band anymore yeah i'm nobody and then so i couldn't deal with that feeling so i left from there and went back further um further east to to Jacksonville and moved back in with my friend Alan, which was pretty amazing. The drummer. Yeah. I now lived in the house that's backyard fence linked up to my grandmother's backyard fence. I was on the other side of the fence now. But your grandparents were still there? My grandmother was still alive, but my grandfather died.

He died and I left home. Right. It like i i was there till he passed right and when he passed he passed about the same time that my cat bully was poisoned i'm relatively sure and i remember thinking like i'm out so this was kind of a return in fact i didn't tell anyone i had gotten back yeah didn't want anyone to know yeah and that's where i wrote heartbreaker in his living room yeah i um went to nashville it was very weird it was just me and ethan and an engineer in the studio and that was how heartbreaker started yeah and gillian and dave would come around gillian welch yeah yeah and Yeah. And Dave Rollins. They came around, I think, like two different nights

to sort of see what was going on. And Emmy came down, and I had been around her before. Emmy Lou Harris? Where had you been around her? I first met her at this show that's no longer on the air that's called Sessions at West 54.

Yeah. And they did a special about the music of Graham Parsons parsons right and they had different people playing with the house band and she and i had met at that i think we actually maybe met before that at like a at black mountain bluegrass festival or something and then so i saw her there when you were with whiskey town yes but i i used to do a more broken down version of it. Right. And you were a Graham Parsons fan.

Yes. I was obsessed. Like when I first heard Graham Parsons, it took me a long time to process that he existed. Was it after the Cowboy Junkies? Yes. Yeah. One of the first things that Skillet did was, you know, he like gave me a beer and we talked and he put on Graham Parsons, he put on GP.

Yeah. And I was like, what the fuck is this? He's like, wait, you don't know what this is? I was like, no, what is this? And he showed me the CD cover. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, who is this is this person yeah he's like oh man he's like we have a lot to talk about he's like do you know the flying burrito brothers and

i'm like you're making that that name up for sure and he's like man he's like you got to come by the house and we should just listen to records and so he kind of showed me like look people have gone here before but they didn't even know what they were doing right and he he was putting it to me in the way that he and i used to talk he'd be like man like these were like hippies i'm like what are they doing making country music what happened he's like i don't know like we'd be all wasted he's like i don't know he's like maybe they were confused about what it was so you had to get here you got to get hip to the birds to the flying burrito brothers to the band sweethearts the rodeo happened i remember like what yeah and the band at first i didn't like yeah which is interesting because i didn't like big star at

first either but then it's that thing that like oh i hope it still happens with people now but it's when you're washing dishes at a restaurant because that's your job yeah and different people get a chance to put in what cassette they want and make a mixtape right a song might come on and you might not like it at first or you might not know the band but it's a particular song yeah and it's like for you by big star yeah i remember washing dishes and stopping cold and i'm like whoa what is this and I was like this is exactly how I feel and I ran in

and like Brian Walsby was the second cook in Raleigh and I was like what is this song he's like man we're slammed

what are you doing he's like they need dishes and I'm like what is this song and he's like it's Big Star he's like

you hate him I'm like no I don't hate him anymore and he stops for a second and he goes really and I'm like aren't you slammed he's like we'll talk about it later and I'm like, no, I don't hate him anymore. And he stops for a second. He goes, really? And I'm like, aren't you slammed?

He's like, we'll talk about it later. And I'm like, so the whole rest of the night, I'm like, play the cassette again. Like that whole kind of thing happened. Well, so later on, that happened with me with the band. The Brown album was the record where I was like, oh. The second record with them on cover? Yeah. Yeah. I was like, wow.

That record still to this day i'm like what is going on like there definitely was something to my discovery of that stuff because being from eastern north carolina you're subjected to country music and even at that time um i don't remember george straight at all but i definitely heard johnny cash i knew hank williams my grandfather loved all that and my my grandmother, you know, if there was like the Mandrells, like a TV special on, we watched it. Hee Haw.

Loretta Lynn, big deal in my house. So, but to get hip to Graham was different. I think that changed the game dramatically for me. In fact, that had to have been the first time I went, like where I saw someone writing a song and i went this is mystical thing this isn't it's very different than my punk rock and post-punk records this is a there i knew they were referencing it's like i used to say like they're like messing with like real music right i was like they're doing something with real music but it's like just on the line yeah that was my only way of describing it yeah but you saw that graham showed you that

songwriting could be something transcendent in and of itself yeah i mean i don't think i'd ever really i i mean it's interesting to say that when I first started listening to that and I was in Whiskey Town, it didn't affect me and reach me, although it was kind of doing it. The way that it was sort of like a seed. And what's interesting is you have to fast forward to when that band breaks up, but it breaks up weirdly when I'm in New York. Yeah. And I have in New York. Yeah. And I have to leave to go back. And then I get back to Jacksonville where I just basically wrote songs

and didn't know what was going to happen to my life. And I just went, you know what, this would be cool. I make little records. Yeah. And, you know, I'll make records and do some club dates once in a while and I'll have a regular job. That's what I thought was going to happen.

But I could listen to those records by that time finally and do that thing where you make a couple of neat glasses of whiskey and have a beer and smoke cigarettes. And you cry as a man, as a young man man but still like because of your life like this you let the song hit you it's just you and the record yeah you're by yourself in the house and like your liberal tears go down your face and you're like wow like this song the song is like the song is killing me and like raising me up from the dead at the same time that fucking feeling that you get,

you know, for most people, I think that probably hasn't happened until they've listened to like Bonnie rate. Like, I can't make you love me if you won't like, like that vibe, you know what I mean?

Like some songs are going to do it to you, whether you like it or not. Yeah. They really hit you. But for me, I processed that information in an unusual way that I think kind of mixed it with how much I loved Dylan and how much I loved, you know, I just loved early Bob Dylan so much. Like I just loved that sound and the connection there. And then so you go back and you end up in nashville playing with these amazing musicians

yeah and you make your first solo record yeah and i was just there to make the record i didn't really think i would stay but i got there and my manager was smart enough to be like well listen i basically rented you a house so because i think you should stay here and i was like oh really well he believed in you yeah i think he wanted to get me out of like i think he knew that i could i was like oh really well he believed in you yeah i think he wanted to get me out of like i think he knew that i could i was on that line of going like i'm done like i'm just gonna go move back home and right which would have been really interesting if i had done that so after heartbreaker you you must have built some confidence i mean more than i had yeah before and when you made Gold,

what was the plan? What was your manager telling you to do? What were you doing? Well, so I did the Heartbreaker tour by myself. Yeah. Just you and a guitar? Yeah, and a tour manager, my friend Van. Yeah.

And he wasn't really a tour manager. He just figured it out to do it. Yeah. And that was the first time i really went to england it's the first time i really toured other countries where i really played um solo by myself and really kind of played some regal places yeah i didn't even know it was in magazines someone had to tell me yeah like you're in this magazine called mojo oh yeah i remember mojo and i'm like what is that and so i did all

that and i came back and um my manager set up a deal for me to move from bloodshot to um and like a label called lost highway but it was essentially mercury records which i was afraid to be on anyway and um but i did it because he was like look it's going to be great um they tell they told me all the stuff that they tell anyone like we'll let you do whatever you want yeah so i did that and then i went to record the follow-up which was actually a double album but uh of it was that many songs but it was just me and a guitar yeah bob dylan's slide guitar player yeah and sometimes a stand-up bass player yeah and i wanted it that stripped back because that's what i learned on the road i was like wow that the root of the song is great song's great right so i did all these recordings and they didn't they liked

some of them they didn't love them and that later on got in the early days of cds and then laptops happened that eventually got bootlegged to become this thing called people call it the suicide handbook that's what they call this bootleg yeah but because but they but the original thing i wrote on the disc that they must all be from yeah was the career suicide handbook oh okay because someone told me when i played it for them if that was my record they're like well this is just career suicide and i was like that's a great name yeah for the record right like you can't call it that i'm like i'm like okay so basically everything you said is like not true yeah it's like you're like you could do whatever you want like you just want to support the artist

but no you can't call your record that and it's not this record right so i was like well cool i talked to ethan he goes come out to la and let's just let's just make stuff there's some he's like you got some cool songs left over from heartbreaker you have some of these new ones let's just like call in some people like we did last time and see what happens and i kind of was like blown away by the sunshine and blown away by meeting people and i didn't know heartbreaker had reached people that at the time i never would have met i never would have met right so i was around for the first time people that i was akin to but they were people that live here and it's hard if you don't live in hollywood to realize like you can literally be at a diner somewhere and you're a

spastic arty person and you could be from arkansas yeah and like maybe you didn't think anyone was like you but a couple of your freaky friends yeah and you have all these touchstones and pop culture but like you could be at just a deli or something and like you could meet like you know ali sheedy like or something like right like and like you could have like this wicked conversation because it's because you both love the band x it just happens and then you could say okay later like that's just how it is yeah and or you could run into like rayman zarek like right well when he was alive i did that several times and i was like i i was like wow there's rayman zarek yeah and he's like get that yeah he was totally cool and like um i i think uh and i so i

think for that influenced the record and i felt optimistic and i was on the other side of a pretty deep wound my career wasn't gone i was making an album um a lot of people were on that album on gold yeah ethan um lived here at the time so he knew a lot of musicians were on that album, on Gold. Yeah, Ethan lived here at the time, so he knew a lot of musicians who were great. Ben Mont, who later was someone that I played with on my last couple of records. He's great. I've talked to him, Ben Montench.

Yeah, he's an amazing friend, but he played on that record, and I never even met him then. Yeah, Kamasi Washington, too, it says. Yeah, I was there for that session, but Ben Mont came in and played and was gone before I got there.

And Chris Stills is a friend of yours. Yes. Yeah. And he... His dad is Stephen Stills. Yeah, and then strangely, again,

what's interesting is Ethan and Chris were down the hall making their record with the Stones were across the hall and I was just in that side room

at... It's called... i think it's called cello now or maybe they change it back to east west or whatever the studio's name at the time was but so that's the same place where liz fair whiskey town rolling stones and crystals all in the same building it goes back to like there's that first connection happening again and then with the second person yeah it's pretty pretty interesting so gold does well for you that's a uh did you have did you chart i don't think i did i don't remember if it did i think that i think they spent a lot of money and a lot of time yeah um on promo

for that record yeah and i remember i never stopped doing promo and like like it was sort of a like any person that would be up for it i talked to them it was that sort of time in my career yeah so i feel like what people felt that record was versus what it did were different also that was a different time that was the some of the earliest days when you could start bootlegging records. Right. Which I didn't know about. Yeah. Which is fine.

Also, this other thing happened. 9-11 happened. Yeah. And that actually happened the day my record came out, which is pretty wild. I think that was the day that the Strokes' Is This It came out on that day. I remember it like this yeah i still was playing shows and i still was in my zone like i played a show only a couple months later and like elton came out and played on stage with me at like irving plaza which was so cool of him and it was super amazing elton john elton john came out to play and like things like that would happen all the time

but you know mostly uh as i remember it um even though these cool things could be happening my focus and no one else's focus especially living in new york um was really ever far away from the shock of that like it really resonated and and i don't remember i wasn't taking a lot of drugs or doing anything too crazy i just that time i think was mostly like you just wake up and go like i gotta get through today like you know and i i'm not gonna look at the television and then you do and then like you're mortified again and people were scared yeah i was there it was it was horrible really horrible and so people go like so yeah like after 9-11 like your song became like an anthem of sorts i'm like no man like it didn't which one new york new york yeah but people say

that but i go like that's not true yeah like i remember the radio at that time like they played like john lennon they played neil young like radio changed that for a while yeah it took a minute for anybody it was kind of bizarre that like it's like all of a sudden people went towards the most meaning possible and the things that they cherished and it was like every i mean it's a very sobering thing but radio changed tv changed you know yeah it's hard to watch David Letterman and Conan O'Brien at that time, like, crying on TV and, like, really breaking down. I mean, but that's how everybody felt. It's horrible. Months later, you're walking around, and you could still, like, smell that soot in the air.

That weird metal, melting metal smell. You could taste it. I remember I was like, it was pretty bizarre. melting metal smell you could taste it i remember i was like it was a pretty bizarre so yeah i didn't yeah i didn't have that experience of going of of being able to feel that record so you got through that well what what caused you to get like you say you get you still get high what caused you to get you know sober off what are you off of booze yeah i don't well i mean some people would say like pot is a drug but and i get it but uh it's you know i did a it's not coke it's not dope it's not booze and i did a lot and i did a very very

long time where i was just totally straight yeah but um i could not find any way without um i couldn't find a way to deal with menear's disease um without the suggestion that i should take um stuff for the pain and what is the symptoms of that exactly it's very hard to describe it but i'll sort of put it this way like um like if you're sitting in a chair and it's normal and you're talking to someone and then you, and I have what I feel like as an episode and I get up, um, especially if I have been stressed or, um,

sometimes it's triggered. It could be, I haven't been sleeping well and I get like a bulb flashes or something flashes really quickly. Um, then it's like the distance from where my feet are to the ground i don't know how far it is to the ground what it's like crazy it's like um yeah it feels like you're on the edge of a building but then also like so your stomach drops and you it feels like

you're sick yeah and then i and you can't really eat um you can but you just get really sick and my jaw goes numb and then my hands go numb it's and then i and i used to be it used to be much worse and i just would be in bed because i just couldn't yeah i i couldn't be but weed helps it's really funny like i was so i was just with it, and I was just shipwrecked for years. And I quit playing music. I quit playing live because I couldn't handle it. Yeah. Nothing worked.

And one day, my brother-in-law was like, he was like, he's like a funny and cool dude. But he was like, hey, man, I hate to know that you're sick, but I like, so I made these cookies. Like, I know you don't really, you know, do anything. But I saw these cookies and make you feel better. They're really mellow. And I was like, what is he talking about? And I don't really think about it. I just went, ooh, cookie.

Yeah. So I ate like half a cookie. Yeah. about i just went oh cookie yeah so i ate like half a cookie yeah and instantly um in the middle of this drawn out really horrible time not feeling good um i felt better like in a couple of hours i i don't know i i felt i just felt better yeah and by that night i went for a walk and like i've better yeah and by that night i went for a walk and like i've i i had like a little bit more of an appetite and i just was like this is working and i was like i'm not like oh let me see how many cookies i can eat like i didn't go right into some kind of place but when i was diagnosed they were like you need to stop smoking yeah you cannot drink yeah like you cannot drink coffee you cannot have

sodium like the the guy basically explained it to me he was like you're gonna have to eventually find a way to get exercise when you can and change all this stuff in your life or or it'll exacerbate it because he was like it's a degenerative disease and the longer you have it the worse that you will get. And he's like, the usual finality of what happens is you go deaf. I was like, wow, this is a game changer. So I just live with that. That's kind of why I was like, I got to stop touring with the Cardinals.

We were so loud. Yeah. And it wasn't like it was when it started and so i went off the road and i just because i lived here for a while i went to like see an acupuncturist i'd never done that it helped i went to see a hypnotherapist to deal with attacks like what do i do when i have an attack if i'm like on stage or like what would be the theoretical thing yeah and to quit smoking yeah that that worked and um little by little i started to get better it was like a it's like a pathetic version of rocky it was just like a dude yeah trying to figure out how to get back to guitar yeah well i'm glad you're better why why did you do a whole the why did you cover taylor swift's record

why yeah um what compelled you why did you cover Taylor Swift's record? Why? Yeah. What compelled you? I don't know. I guess it's one of those things like have you ever done have you ever have you ever done something creative

and you and you just and you finished it because you started it? Yeah. Because it it's like a it'll be hard but it's like that would be really hard i should try that and like and then you get halfway

or whatever and you're like what am i doing or maybe you ask yourself that but you go like i'm like i gotta finish it i started now yeah and then you finish it and you're stoked that you did you and that's so cool i did it my version of 1989 yeah man i want to hear your version of it here's the interesting thing yeah uh i learned a ton from doing that yeah and i needed to be playing and i wasn't on tour yeah and i would have gone crazy had i not been yeah and i just like but i also was like i didn't want to write more songs right and you liked your songs yes i i think that there i mean there are some of her songs that it's just crystalline so what'd you learn well because that record was different and it wasn't like her on a guitar yeah

that's the other weird thing is it was like, wow, like, how do I process this record? You know, she's my friend. Like, we don't, like, go to football games and chill together or anything. But, like, you know, we check in and, like, talk about music once in a while. And she's always been, supports my vibe and vice versa. a while and she's always been supports my vibe and and vice versa but i knew that um i was like it was even if i hadn't known or i wanted to do it because i was like well i'm not going to do like i don't want to cover like like dark side of the moon right right i i wanted to know what that record was yeah and uh when i was on tour i would listen to it and go like i like wow this is really beat

oriented but so where i can hear the bass line and it's cool because you're using a sub bass and then there's this top line i'm like so where is it on the guitar yeah in my mind i was imagining the capo positions right so by the time i just sat down with me and my buddy todd that we would we'd go on the quest to make anything sound like the Smiths like like our thing was what if we try to make

that record feel like the Smiths or something yeah and I was like it should be like that but if we can't make it like that

then we just try to make it sound like darkness on the edge of town he was like we're in let's do this and we got a couple in

and we're like it really works yeah and but then came the thing where you go oh wow so okay she has all this full range as a vocalist but i don't so if i want to play the same chords but make the song work the only way is capo fourth fret and i'm gonna have to when i hit this place like shift so it was so cool because i'm like this is way out of my comfort zone i'm so down for that

oh good so by the time i figured it all out and could get my way in i not only had spent this great time being a musician and just like translating stuff but i got to think about these tunes in a different way it felt good it felt like sure get some new muscles i never really have i've never covered a whole record and And the covers that I have done have usually been pretty easy, or they've been to do them. But it led me to also know that since I didn't start playing guitar doing covers, I made up for it by later covering, like, at the time, like, the most successful record.

Yeah. Because that's sort of like, you know, most people learn Stairway to Heaven first. But for me, I waited until I was like 41 or something and I covered in 1989. Love it. One of the reasons I knew I had to talk to you, because we've sort of circled around this for a long time. But I don't know, someone sent me this link of you, not even in a real performance situation just doing um warfrat the grateful dead's warfrat on an acoustic guitar somewhere it looked like a at a tech show or

something and you know like that is one of my my favorite songs of all time me too and it just hits me so fucking deeply and it always has and i can't even remember the first time I heard it. What is it? Because you developed a relationship with Phil after Jerry died, right? And it was around that song, right? Yeah. I don't know how that happened. I mean, I think it was from Phil had heard the record I made called Cold Roses.

I think his wife got on that record. Yeah. And it really resonated with him. And so he started coming to see shows. That song for me, also strangely that you're telling me this, because that song for me was my portal into the Grateful Dead. And I feel like the Grateful Dead is like a geography. It's like if there were

a map for it everybody has a different version of what it is yeah but in my mind like there are certain places i don't go to yeah but i know the neighborhood path to stick to so that i find my way through their catalog and their live stuff and and more and more as i travel it those places i didn't love before like they're actually becoming more familiar and I'm cool with them. But Warfrat is on the Skull and Roses, aka Skullfuck record. That record, that song in particular, I don't know what kind of music that is. I don't know what happens. But from the very beginning with this, the toms that are rolling so freely. It's like the African rhythm that just sort of then coalesces into. It's like breathing. It's like yoga. It's like meditation.

Right. Mysticism. Yeah. They are so. They are so, they are so, I feel like when I listen to that song and listen to the dead, I feel like I can close my eyes and I could feel like the presence of nature,

like the actual reality of earth and like what it sounds like and all the stuff, the noise that we make it disappears and i'm like oh this this is reality yeah it's so much more transcendental than you know like it there's so many more stories and they they reek of empathy they reek of compassion they in it they're not and it's not they're not self-victimized and they're not bleeding like they are it's like a they're just a fucking huge marshmallow love machine like a tank made out of marshmallows just like rolling down a hill of like blueberries and like you're just at the bottom and you're

like come on just hit me and it just rolls over you and you're like amen and it that's to me and then you're like i'll get up and fly away totally i mean yeah i mean it's it's i mean it's an unbelievable thing to say but the very first time i ever heard that was in north carolina and as early on it was when i had first moved um in uh to the band room yeah with jerry and alan the first guys i played with and i used to go to rocky mount all the time because we had friends there that play guitar and um there's this guy named dean that was a huge deadhead and i was like i just don't understand i'm like can we he was like well so we'd listen to the doors that's how we would right that's how we'd figure it out one night he's like i just wanted i want you to see something yeah he was like okay and i was um it was felicia him and me and we drove out into this place that near his dad's farm

where there wasn't anything and you could see all the stars yeah just this really big long stretch of trees and he's like i just want you to listen to this and we were on a little bit of acid yeah and he turned up his car stereo and he played that song and i was like lying down on my back on the hood of the car yeah felicia's lying down the same way dean turned it up as loud as it would go yeah he had like a mazda 280z or something that had like the top came off right and that song came on and I just remember going like what and I'm like looking up

you could see like the Orion constellation I'm like what the fuck and and by the time it got to the end like I don't think I said anything for hours like I was just like oh my god and like luckily it didn't the end like i don't think i said anything for hours like i was just like oh my god and like luckily it didn't go into like you know it didn't go into like some of the there's

definitely some speed oriented like covers yeah right right right johnny be good yeah yeah which are great but i just kept that and i was like he knew he knew how to get me he was like he loves la woman like and we listened to early stones this is how i'm gonna get him in and as soon as he did that like what do they say like you're on the bus the portal was opened yeah and i never got to see the dead but weirdly the next time i really ever i mean i learned that song but the flash forward to this moment another one of those moments like keep passing me the joint and it's like

the two fingers like and it was looking up at Red Rocks and going into the beginning of that song deciding when it would happen and then hearing those bass notes and looking over to my left

and even though I know him and he's my friend, like it's night and there's all these stars, and I'm like, boom, boom, boom. And I hear, do-do-do-do-boom, boom. And I just, and I kept playing, but I just looked to my left and his fucking, there's Bill. And he just looks at me and he's smiling. It's like he knows.

And I'm just like, I don't know. And I just was like, just get in the song, get in the song. And so all these people, as far as you could see. And I just remember going like, I remember going like, there's no way I'll ever be able to describe what's happening in this moment. But fuck yeah, man. It just came through you. You decided to go into Warfret and you were playing with Phil and friends, right? Yeah.

And Phil, you look over and he's like, yeah. Totally, man. Totally. Great talking to you, man. Nice talking to you. Beautiful, man. Nice talking to you. Beautiful, man. Beautiful. Covered a lot of ground.

Interesting dude. Poetic. Interesting mind. And loves the song Warfrat. That, you know, no matter what that guy does, I love him for that. Is that all right? love him for that. Is that alright? Hope you enjoyed that.

Go to WTFpod.com slash tour to see where I'm going to be playing in the next few months. Maybe I'll be by you. And maybe should I? I'll play a little guitar. Okay. Yeah. You talk me into it. so Boomer lives! Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence.

Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly.

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