Transcript of Chris Stapleton

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard, and I'm joined by the miniaturist, Mouse in America.

Hi, it's me.

We've been working on this one for a while. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we've been begging and working, and it happened. Hustling. Yeah, down in Nashville, too, right where it should happen.

That's right.

We were in the barn in Nashville, and we have Chris Stapleton today. Chris Stapleton is a Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and guitarist. His albums are Traveler, From A Room, Starting Over Higher. He's got his tour right now, The All-American Road Show, and you can get tickets for that at www. Chrisstapleton. Com/tour. He also has his own show on Serious, which you should check out.

Check it out.

Lastly, you should drink some of his Traveler whiskey, which he was reticent to promote, which he should because it's a magical whiskey.

It makes note. Maybe he was reticent because You're sober.

No, he's just a guy with so much integrity. He doesn't want to self-promote.

Well, he definitely should have, and he should have brought us some because I wanted it.

Yeah, it's from the Brewmasters. You don't call them Brewmasters in Whiskey. You call them some other masters. Yeah, Whisky Masters. I don't know what the hell. Whisky Masters from Pappies.

Yeah, big deal.

Yeah, big deal. So drink his Whisky, listen to his music, go see him on tour, and listen to him on serious. Please enjoy Chris Stapleton. He's an objérex fan. He's an objérex fan.

He's an objérex fan. He's an objérex fan.

Is it lost?

Yeah, where did I fucking put that down? What's you looking for?

My notes for you.

You don't have them memorized?

You're born April 15th, 1978.

That's pretty good.

That's really good.

It's better I could do.

Yeah, we're going to test you at the end. I don't even know when I'm born. Our birthday, your home birthday. Did you have a nice holiday? I did. I'm from Georgia, so I was just at my family's house. It was easy. Duluth, right? Yeah, Duluth. Oh, my God. Done your homework.

No, you just said it on one. I did listen to a few things. I didn't do that much homework. I don't like to go into things doing too much homework. Sometimes I like to see what happens.

You got them?

I think it would have been fun if you couldn't find them and we just went.

I know. Well, that's basically what the interview will be. Those are just a safety net. Where were they?

On the counter inside. Okay. I didn't even bring them out. I got to start by saying last summer, we got to interview a couple of people here, Jason Aldeen and Luke Holmes. Yeah. I got to catch my breath.

Oh, my.

I ran.

You ran? My bad calf. Oh, no. He did sprints yesterday, so now he broke his body. I told him not to do that.

My body is broken every day.

After the age 35, five, you shouldn't be sprinting anymore.

I don't know if that's true.

I think it's really true.

I think that's clinically accurate. I think that's medically true. We had both Jason and Luke, and both of them independently went on these crazy tirades about you. The degree of, Well, nobody can sing like Chris. That's just that. And his songwriting just, he's on another level that no one can really touch. And both these guys, the way they gushed about you.

And they're very different people, too. That was a through line.

Then I just went like, Oh, this is cool. I have loved your music, but it's very interesting to hear people on the inside talk about it. I found that very intriguing.

Well, I appreciate con words.

Yeah, it's not my world. If you were hanging out with a bunch of actors and they were like, You know who the best actor is? Is Walton Goggins. We're just talking about him.

You were? Yeah.

Because I listened to some of that episode that you guys just did with him. Oh, okay. And the goggles and the whole thing.

Goggins goggles.

The alliteration.

Do you listen to a podcast?

Not really. People ask me what I listen to a lot, and I look for silence a lot, and that's a weird thing to say. I've said that before in other interviews, but I do like silence because I am looking for something outside of something to come down through the antenna.

Silence is where you'll receive some song.

Or just a thought about what I need to do today. It doesn't have to be grand.

With five kids.

Silence is golden in that.

Hard to come by.

But also it It can be disconcerting when you're so used to that much chaos.

Yeah, it's a little scary.

You're just like, Oh, what do I do with this?

Also, if you have five kids and you hear silence, this is a pretty good indication something's going really wrong.

Yeah, you go check on people at that point.

You're from Staffordsville, Kentucky?

Yes, sir.

How big of a town is that?

I don't know that there's actually a population. It's more of a suburb of Paceville, Kentucky, and I don't even know what that population is. It's small.

Like in the 5,000, 10,000 range?

Yeah, somewhere somewhere in there. I wouldn't know what the actual population is today. We'll find it for the fact check.

Dad was an engineer in the coal mines? Is that accurate?

He was a coal miner, yes. He had an engineering degree. He was an electrical engineer by degree.

But what did he physically do at work?

He was an independent operator, underground mining.

Was he operating machinery?

He ran it. It was his deal that he started small business person. But he did all the things.

Did he own a mine? Yes. Wow. How does one go about owning a mine? Use by and start digging for coal?

Never really got into it. But you acquire mineral rights from different landholders and you carry your pistol with you a lot.

And did he do well?

No, that's an industry dominated by large energy companies. Please, large energy companies, don't come after me for saying these things, but they control markets. They'll lose money on purpose to put other people out of business to buy up their rights. It's very volatile. There's the opportunity to make money in that business as a small operator. But my dad, at some point in my life, had to go to Cincinnati to where the business got so bad, there was no more. He shut down.

What would he do when he went to Cincinnati?

He worked for a company called Pirelli. Oh, tires? They have a cabling site. He worked for the industrial cable site.

Because it's coded in the rubber that Pirelli makes or something? I don't know. Yeah, that's a weird...

It was weird.

Then mom worked for the Health Department?

Sure, for the Health Department, yeah.

What guy was dad?

A hard-working guy. He left before the sun was up and came home after the sun was down.

Could you feel his stress?

Felt very safe and maybe secure. That feels rare. He was a fair man, but a hard man. Stern, very black and white about things that he- Believed in? Yeah, and unyielding to a fault.

How much older is Herbert than you, your brother?

My brother Herb is three years older than me.

I'm five years younger brother, and I'm a total little brother.

Well, I was until my sister's 12 years younger than me. I was the little brother for that amount of time, and then I had to adjust.

Yeah, and I'm six years older than my little sister.

But that doesn't count.

It doesn't count? No.

Why does it not count?

Because he has little brother energy, and that's because the older brother. I'm not counting Carly, his little sister, in the mix.

You're not, because that's a very middle-childy syndrome. Well, that's true. But she'll be using little brother as a pejorative, and I'll be using it as a positive. Because I think you get a lot of skills as a little brother, and I'm wondering if you relate.

What skills do you believe that you get as a little brother?

Okay, I'll hit you with them.

I'll tell you if I have them.

Okay. I also think it's definitely what your personality type is. So this wouldn't be the same for all little brothers, but I with my kids, for sure. We were both pretty alpha-y. We knew what we wanted, each of us independently. But he's five years older, so he was stronger and cooler, and I was constantly trying to be older. The worst thing I could be as a baby, I wanted to get along with his friends. The skill it gave me is I've been able to be around pretty alpha dudes that I might normally butt heads with, but I know the role very well. I know the role of of still advocating for myself, but knowing what position to keep myself in a little bit. I'm mostly curious for you if that showed itself when you started writing with these musicians who are In essence, big brothers. They have the status, they have the power. You got to obviously be able to work with them.

I had an experience with a writer early on where I came in the room and the first thing he said to me, he was an established writer. He goes, Man, you must have a pretty big ego. I didn't know what that meant. I'm I was like, Why do you think that? He's like, Well, you just think you can walk in here and write songs with those have been introduced? I was like, I don't look at it that way, but let's write a song and we'll find out. I never felt less than or unequal to those tasks, and I'll sit in a room with anybody and write a song. To your point of the little brothers, I did hang out with my brother's friends, but we also played sports together. I played sports with them. My brother is not as tall as I am. He was a free safety, and I was a linebacker. We weren't necessarily competitive with each other, but we were. But he was very protective. He just retired from the FBI. Oh, wow. Oh, no shit. That carried into his career. He's a protector. We didn't butt heads in that way where I was trying to show him up.

I don't know that I was trying to show my brother up as much as I just wanted his respect.

I think I always felt like I had that.

I don't think I had. But also I can hang. That's my point. I think the thing you can get as a little brother is you learn how to hang because you're in a situation where you're a guest and you'll be easily kicked out of the situation. I think you get good at the hang.

To your point of knowing your role or what you can contribute to a scenario, even this right now. I have to sit here and assess what I can contribute to this conversation. You guys have done this a lot. I've done it very little.

How do you like press in general?

It's not my comfort zone necessarily, but I don't mind doing it. You guys are really in luck today because I have absolutely nothing to promote or talk about. I know.

That's our favorite. That is our favorite.

Our favorite is just trying to figure out who's the guy behind all the stuff or who's the woman.

When we started this show, it was not to help promote people's projects at all. It was this. It's like, let's just have cool people who we want to get to know. And then over time, when it got bigger, then people would say, Hey, our client has a movie. Can they come on and promote the movie? And it's like, at the end for five minutes, but we're here to do something else.

But you guys are a big enough thing that you're part of that wheel where people now approach you with that, and so you have to sort that out.

But we've been hunting you. We were begging for you. I know. I've told them that. Because you and Luke have the same publicist, maybe. Is that who it is?

Yes.

And when she was here, we were like, Okay, so we really love Chris. I first saw you. You did a 60 Minutes profile probably three or four years ago. That was my first-That was it? That was it. I mean, I'd heard your music, but that was like, Oh, here's this guy who at that point on the outside, I don't know what it felt like on the inside, is like, Oh, there's a phenome on the scene. And that was the essence of the 60 Minutes interview. And it was just a great profile. I also fucking love 60 Minutes. But how was that? Is that majorly uncomfortable? Because that's days, right?

I've been real fortunate that people understand maybe my discomfort with some of it. I've been real lucky in that everybody's really nice and easy to work with.

You're crazy likable.

I don't know that I've had an experience where like, man, that was uncomfortable. The first time I ever went on stern, I was uncomfortable about going on stern. It's scary. It was like a wild card thing. I don't know what he's going to ask or how uncomfortable he's going to try to make me as he can if he wants to. It was a remarkably wonderful experience, and he was so kind.

Were you shy as a kid?

I don't know that I was, particularly, I find that maybe I am more as an adult.

Fame can have this very bizarre effect, counterintuitive effect. It certainly had it on me, which is like, I'm a huge extrovert all growing up. I'm such an extrovert, not shy. But when you meet people who already know you, for me, I want to deliver. I want to make sure that they enjoyed it and that when they leave, they're like, I'm glad I met him. So I enter in with a little anxiety. This change for me. It's made me less of an extrovert.

Because you feel like you have to on.

Before, I was just a piece of shit. I'd meet someone at 7/11. It was either funny or it wasn't who gave a shit, and then they drove away. But now I'm like, okay, I got to-Because it feels like some pressure to perform? To deliver. Like, oh, here's someone who's telling me they love me and they love my stuff. I want to make sure that I Give them what they want. Don't let them down. That's what it is. I have the pressure of like, I don't want to let someone down who has expressed that they like me.

I get that, but also at some point, you're just a human being, and you just got to go. I don't have it today, man, but thank you. I can't be the dancing My wife yelled at me for 20 minutes on the way to this airport that you're seeing me at, so keep that in mind in this interaction. There's human experiences that you bring into everything that people aren't necessarily seeing that in you in those moments.

They're not assuming you might have had a really crazy, terrible morning.

No. For the most part, I don't. I feel very fortunate.

They're right for the most part.

That is little brother energy. That is wanting approval.

Yeah, I want approval.

Listen, I want approval. I stand up on stage and want to hear people do this.

Yeah, I'm a junkie.

But you do for your work. But do you as you, I think Dax and me, probably, maybe a little bit less, because I'm an older sister, you want people to approve of you, not your work necessarily. You as a person.

Yeah, we're probably opposite in that way, I guess. You think? Well, I'll tell you why you'll easily understand. When I just was acting and people give me compliments, did not feel like mine. That was a great director. The script was great. My co-starters were better than me.

That can be true of all situations in life. We're all the sum of the people around us.

That's true. But if someone loves one of your songs, you wrote it, you sang it, you played it. I feel that way about the podcast. If people like me for the podcast, I'm able more to be proud of the work.

Sure.

I was shocked, and I don't know why that you were a valedictory.

Congratulations. Thank you. That's awesome.

Now, I don't want to insult you, but what was the pool of people they were selecting from? Is this thousands of people? There were two of us.

That's a big deal.

Fuck, yeah. I don't think we've ever interviewed a valedictorian. I know.

We've interviewed- Yes, you have.

I don't.

Somebody just didn't tell you.

I wonder if Bill Gates was the valedictorian.

Nobody wants to talk about... I mean, I'm 47. We're talking about something 30 years ago. Why are we talking about this?

Actually, that's interesting being the valedictorian because early on, you had a moment of I'm number one. Yeah. That does something to people.

You think?

It teaches you you can be number one. It's a possibility.

How did it work? First of all, how many kids were in your graduating class?

250.

That's impressive. Does the principal call you in?

No.

No.

Because you probably had to make a speech at graduation, right?

I actually just sang a song. Oh, you did?

I did. What song did you sing?

I wrote one.

Was It was called Valedictorian?

It was, absolutely.

It was really on the nose. Early work.

It was called 4. 0.

Not to minimize, but it was like a shared thing. There were four or five of us. We were all tied.

That's still great. The two things that check me right away is like, Valedictorian and then football. I think that surprised me, too. Why? Because you exude this really kind soulfulness, gentleness. Tenderness. Tenderness, sensitive, all the things that magic about your music. That's what you exude. And those are fucking awesome things to exude. So if you find out he's a football player and then a brainiac, it's a little out of the pattern.

No, I think it's okay to have parts, football games, an organized street fight where you get to get some aggression out between the whistles. I think that's healthy and good. I love football. I enjoyed it. And if I had been good enough, I'd still be playing. I would have played football over playing music. What?

Thank God you weren't good enough.

I would have raced cars over anything I ended up doing.

Yeah. Everybody has something like that where they're like, If I was good enough, I'd be doing that. I'm glad that I'm not doing that.

You would have been brought in on a wheelchair, probably at 47.

Yeah, on a FCTE or something like that. Exactly.

I'm glad you said it.

I worry about those things just from how I played when I was in high school. We were taught to use our heads as weapons, and we did.

Son, God gave you a weapon. It's on your shoulder, so don't you just swing it around? Yeah. Okay, so when did you start playing guitar?

Maybe 12. My dad had bought a guitar with the thought of him learning how to play, and it just sat around. That's why I picked up that guitar.

Self taught or did you ever take lessons or anything?

I took one lesson, and the guy quit teaching lessons the next day. I had one lesson, and that was it.

Did he have a health issue or were you the reason? Did you force him into retirement?

Pretty much. I don't know. I really don't know. I went to my cousin's house, and me and my cousin, this guy was some local cat, put in a paper or something. He taught a lot. I don't know where we found him. My mom found him or something. He came over to my cousin's house, and we took one guitar I don't even know that we learned anything.

That was it.

What if he was like, I can't. There's nothing more I can do.

I have nothing more to teach you. Yeah, that's what it probably is.

He was my only guitar teacher. Exactly.

That's really, yeah. That was cool. What kid were you in high school?

Pretty good kid. I was busy. I did all the stuff.

Getting the good grades.

If there was an activity to do, I would do it.

Were you popular?

Maybe in my own mind. I don't know. I'm sure you were. Popular among people who are my peers. I don't have any real That's the concept of that. I think I was, but I don't know.

Okay. Were there girls like you? I hope you would know that. I had a girlfriend. You had a girlfriend? Okay, that's good. A lot of guys didn't have those. I mean, a lot of guys never got one of those in high school.

We were just talking about popular on the car the other day where I think now popular is different than what you think of it as.

Tell me how.

We were talking to some kids. They were like, popular isn't like that. Now it's just you're in your groups, but there's no top group.

But do you think that's kids in private schools in LA where they've- Maybe. Yeah, I think so. Because I hear it, too. We have friends who go to these really nice schools and no one's getting picked on, no one got their ass kicked in the parking lot. I'm like, this is an eating in, it sounds like.

Yeah, nobody's trying to sell bags of oregano and pass them off as marijuana.

That's true.

You weren't set on music, right, in high school?

I played a little music outside of school, but I did more sports-oriented things in high school.

When you went to Vanderbilt, you went for biomedical engineering and then switched to business. I hated all that, by the way. You hated all those classes and everything? Yeah. It couldn't have been an accident you picked Vanderbilt, right? Do you think in the back of your mind, you're like, Let's get over to Nashville?

I just like Nashville. I had been to a football camp at Vanderbilt, and I liked the coaches. I was going to try to walk on because you're 18, you think you can do anything. Once again, you think you can be number one. Then you're getting in the real world and you're like, Oh, that guy's 270 and runs Maybe I can't do this.

Also, you may not know this since you're not from the south, but Vanderbilt is the Ivy of the south. That's what they call it.

They used to call themselves the Harvard of the south. Exactly. Harvard of the south.

It's just weird. I grew up hearing that as well. If you were a valedictorian, it would make sense.

You're supposed to go there. You got here, you hated all those classes, you kept changing your major, and then, as legend goes, you meet a dude who is a salaried songwriter.

Yeah, but I lived in Kentucky at the time.

Wait, you dropped out and then moved back to Kentucky?

Well, I went to UK for two years. What's UK?

University of Kentucky. University of Kentucky. Okay. Where's that? Lexington?

Lexington, Kentucky.

This didn't make it to your Wikipedia page. This is like that. Lost years.

It also says on my Wikipedia page that I was in a Travis Tric cover band, which is not true.

That's gone.

Damn it. I always liked it that it was on there. So I could mess with people.

We'll get it back. Someone had put in mind that my birth name was Daxamis. That lived there for years. I was like, That's pretty great.

I like it when there's fake shit on the internet. Is that where people ask you about it, you're like, No, that's fake.

Okay, so wait, you went up to Kentucky, you did two years there, and what were you majoring in there?

It was business.

But why did you leave Vanderbilt? I hated it. You hated just the scene?

A little bit. I just wasn't good at it. I wasn't prepared. For what? For the intensity of it.

Of the academics? Yeah.

For the Harvard of the South. Yeah. Right.

I wasn't prepared. Because it came easy to you before. So then, yeah, that makes sense.

Where did your dad go to college?

He went to WVU, West Virginia University.

Is he from West Virginia? Mm-hmm. He died in '13?

That sounds right.

My dad died in 2012. Too young, 62, my dad.

'62 was my dad.

Was it coal-related?

No. He was diabetic and had renal failure and congestive heart failure and a number of-Systemic collapse of organs.

If he died in 2013, he missed quite a bit of stuff, all of the solo career. Yeah. Does that bum you out?

Well, it probably wouldn't exist. I made that first record. I tried to make a record that I thought he would like, and that was what the first record was.

That was Traveler. Yeah.

He did get to see me. I mean, I was in a Bluegrass band.

The Steel drivers?

The Steel drivers, and he really loved that band. He was really bummed out when I was no longer in that band.

The Steel drivers were fucking great. That's what I've been listening to the last two days. Thank you. Yeah, that's some good first shit. Okay, so how do you end up leaving Kentucky and then getting to Nashville?

I met this guy named Steve Leslie, who was a salary songwriter at EMI at the time through a mutual appointment. He went to Morehead State University. I lived in a town called Morehead, and I was just working on jobs and lived with guy named Jesse Wells, who plays for Tyler Childers now. He's an instrumentalist that I grew up with, played Little League with, lived in a house with him. Jesse met Steve. Just in passing, I don't even know if it was a real comment, Steve told my friend, he's like, Hey, if you know anybody that writes songs around here, I would love to help somebody out. Oh, wow. And gave him his telephone number. I was back and forth from there, and I think I was probably back home with my parents, helping out there doing something. I don't know what I was doing. I floated a lot in my early 20s. I just called this guy, but I said, Hey, I write songs. He's like, Cool. He sent me a few things. I said, Okay, well, here you go. I just said some things, didn't think anything of it. A couple of weeks went by and he listened to it.

Steve always likes to tell the story that he called and my mom told me, Well, he's fishing. He'll have to call you back.

He's gone fishing.

He's literally gone fishing. But I called him back and he said, Hey, man, this stuff's pretty good. Maybe you want to come down and hang out and write. I came down back and forth for a couple of months and met a few people and it seemed like a good thing to do. I had zero money, so I bombed a little bit of money off my uncle, got down to Nashville, and had about maybe a month's worth of living expenses off what I bombed off of my uncle.

How soon before Seagal.

I had a publishing deal in seven days, which is not- Seven days. Which is not anybody's story, but that's mine. Wow.

How does it work? You've submitted some songs to Steve.

He introduced me to people, to Frank Rogers and Chris Dubois, who ran this publishing company called Seagal Music, which was an EMI coventure at the time. Then I met Liz O'Sullivan, who was a plugger there. That's the person that pitches songs around. I don't know how much you know about it. I don't. Liz was a big advocate of mine. Then there were a couple of other people that I met, a guy named Pat Finch. He ran another publishing company. Those guys all got interested in me. Liz Solomon would call me every night. Hey, you just got to come over here. Just come over here. It was a co-venture, so there was no opportunity to really own any of your catalog like it was at some other places. It was less money, the piece of the pie frank for you. There was no ownership, really. But it was more important to me to be working with somebody that believed in what I was doing I said, Well, all that other stuff will work itself out. So I wasn't worried about the money.

So they go, Okay, we're hiring you. You're under contract with us, and we want you to... What did they deploy you? Let go meet with this musician.

Liz orchestrated that, too. She's setting up these veteran guys that you were talking about that I would get in a room with. Yeah. Were because of her. She knew these people, and they'd give some no-name, young guy shot. Get in a room, see what you got.

Yeah. What is the protocol once you're in that room? How are you supposed to know how it goes? That's my question. You've written by yourself. I don't.

I'm going to learn, but I don't say that going in. I know how to write a song by myself. That's where you have to sit back and see what role you can play. Where am I valuable in this? This person is a better guitar player than me, or this person is a better singer than me, or this person is obviously a better writer than me. What can I bring to this? What is my role? Maybe I can go make the coffee, and that's my role.

You did this for 10 years. You wrote a thousand songs in these 10 years. You wrote six number one hits for huge musicians. So it all worked out. But when When you walk into a session with, let's just say, Luke Bryant or any one of these guys you had a hit, do you come in with a song?

I'm not necessarily always writing with artists. Nashville is unique in that it's a songwriter community more than, maybe not as much as it used to be. I'm not in that down there everyday mix like it used to be. It's probably more LA track guys now or something. But you go in a room and it could be just two guys that write songs and be like, What do you got today? Not pointing at anything. It's a clean slate and you just see what comes.

So you haven't come in with anything?

I would rarely come in with anything.

Okay. I don't know if you're supposed to come in like, I am five. Some guys do.

Listen, I have endless blabbering in my phone. Voice memos. Voice memos and typing shit down that I don't know what it means. Most of it's useless, but maybe five years from now, I'll go, Oh, I can use that for this. Yeah.

Well, I was blown away to learn that higher, which ended up on your album, 2023, that was 21 years early earlier you had written that song?

I wrote that song probably the first year I was in Nashville, so maybe longer than that. I moved to Nashville in 2001, so at this point, 25 years old. I think sometimes it's better if they're old because if you still like it and it's that old, it's probably pretty good.

Then this is nosy, but again, I know nothing about it. I'm so curious. When you're working with Seagal, are you just on a monthly stipend?

You get paid a salary, and that's a recoupable salary against royalties.

Anything you end up making the future.

Yeah, and you're also a contract worker. You're not an employee.

You don't get health insurance.

No, you're a contract worker, and that's a year-to-year thing, whether or not they pick up options.

When did the leverage switch and you started getting ownership?

Well, you just negotiate those things when your contracts come up. It's contract negotiation. Okay. I always like terms better than money. Terms are always better than money.

Terms are better than money. What does that mean?

The ownership things or reversions. Some guys want, Pay me as much money as you can. You can keep it all.

Up front? Yeah.

Roger, Roger, Roger. When it moved so fast, it was seven days, and then you have this, were you shocked or were you like, Yeah, I am really good at this?

No, you just feel lucky because you know that that's not everybody else's story. You can walk around in Nashville and there's 50,000 guys trying to do that. It might take somebody five or six years or more to get a first publishing deal somewhere.

Yeah.

Now that's based off a social media some way, they pick up some TikTok person. It's a little different.

Yeah, one great song, and then we hope that they've written another 100 or so or can write another 100 or so. Who knows? Of Kenny Chesney, Josh Turner, George Strait, Luke Bryant, these are all guys that you worked with and ended up writing number one singles with. How did those sessions vary?

A lot of the songs you're naming worked the way that I described it. I wrote them with some other dude, they heard the song and they recorded it. I didn't know those guys necessarily.

Okay, great. So you can go to them done without you meeting them? Yeah.

I can imagine this being a very frustrating job. I would have a hard time writing the thing, then that person gets it and it's number one, and everyone is giving them accolades, and it's like, But I wrote it.

Is it hard? I mean, not when the check shows up in the mailbox, it's just fine.

Wow. That is the opposite ego.

When I found out that you could have a job where you could sit in a room and make up things on a guitar, I thought, That's the greatest job I ever heard of.

I think I know the distinction between why it's different is he wasn't trying to be yet the star of the movie. It's not like the writers in Hollywood are pissed that Tom Cruise is getting action. They're like, Yeah, I'm a writer who writes scripts, and this movie got made.

If you wrote the Tom Cruise movie, you're psych.

As a writer, you're still on it. You're just a music writer. You're writing hit songs. You're doing the exact thing you were hoping to do. That's true. Yeah, you're winning. When you start Steel Driver in '07, so I guess you've been here at this point for six years, what is the motivation to do that?

One of the guys that I wrote songs with was a guy named Mike Henderson, veteran guy, great blues player. He was in a band called Mike Henderson, the Blue Bloods, if you ever want to check that out, or also King Snakes. But he's a guitar slinger, session musician. Incredible guitar player. Incredible. He's passed away now, but I wrote probably more songs with him than I did anybody else. He and I both really liked Bluegrass, and as he would have put it, we had these perfectly good songs sitting around going to waste, but they were a bunch of bluegrass murder ballads.

Luke Brian's not going to sing now.

We're not pitching those to commercial country radio. He wanted to get a gig at VFWs or something, and just a weekly gig that we could have a band and have fun, just for fun. I think all good bands start that way. It's just for fun. We started playing standard songs, but we have these other songs that we can play this way. Then we started playing that way. We got a few more gigs, then we wound up having a deal on Grounded Records, which was a Pretty good acoustic label.

And they did really well. The steel drivers did great, right?

Yeah, they did really well, and it was a good time. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, If You Dare.

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I think that made me a better writer doing that. I learned a lot from the guys in that band. They were all session people and pros. I learned how to be in a band, but I also took a pretty big hit in songwriting income because I was touring.

Right, you were losing money doing that.

I was losing money playing that.

Yeah, that's tricky.

But I do feel like it made me better at both of those things. It felt important and it felt like something to do. It was stressful for my wife.

I guess there's two ways this could have happened to you. We interviewed Ted Danson, and his analogy, which I love, was in his life, he feels like he's been sitting in the back of a pickup truck. He's not looking forward. He's just like, things are happening in the environment surrounding him and these opportunities are coming. But in his mind, he wasn't steering the wheel. I'm curious, did you just accidentally end up a lead man?

A hundred %. I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter.

So at no point did you go, Okay, we're switching gears. I'm only writing for me. It just happened.

I still probably won't do that. You still don't do it? I don't write a lot anymore. I do get calls from people to write with them for things, which inevitably winds up being, Hey, will you also come sing on this thing? Okay, well, okay. But I really love the role of getting in a room with somebody and writing for their thing. I enjoy just the exercise of walking in a room with somebody and going, What are we going to do today? What are we going to pull down out of the sky to put the antenna up and see what happens?

Yeah. Does it get you charged? Is there a fear that's also present?

I don't have any fear, zero.

Oh, wow.

That it won't come? I'd be so scared of that.

He's Bill Murray of country. Wow. He just know it's going to happen. He just take a deep breath.

I don't know that I know it's going to happen. I just feel very able.

Yeah, you're competent.

Confident.

This is what you fucking do.

More than anything else. I know. If I can't do anything else, and I can't do a lot of other things very well, there's a lot of holes that come with being able to do a few things pretty good.

Sure. Some blind spots.

Yeah, there's a lot of blind spots in your personality that come with that.

I'm interested in the blind spots. What are your blind spots? Personality-wise, would you say? Personality-wise?

Yeah. I don't like deadlines.

Okay. Okay.

Almost don't believe in them.

Well, sure. If you have a song that comes out 21 years after you wrote it, then deadlines are who are we?

I used to say there's no such thing as a country music emergency. We're not performing brain surgery.

No hearts on ice.

Yeah. People can get really elevated about things that we do. Certainly, I did have someone say to me one time that we have a healing component in what we do for music, and that's important. I took that to heart. But there's not any real emergency.

If the song doesn't come out in August, no one's dying. It's okay.

Yeah. I'm not great at deadlines in that way because I prefer something to be right over it being done, what I believe to be right.

Do you feel a little bit like a psychologist? You sit down with a virtual stranger, I'm imagining a lot of the times, and you're trying to get a read on their personnel, and you want to help fill in what they're lacking and then lean on whatever they're strong. Is there a feeling out period where you're trying to figure out what's the best approach to work with this person?

I don't know, man. I just show up.

You just show up. That's half a life.

Yeah, I do think that. I think half a life, or at least the way that I have gotten to is showing up. Must be present to win, I used to say.

Yeah, I think Nashville is a much more special place than people broadly know. I think it's a really supportive place.

We're all rooting for each other. If your buddy got a number one, you're like, That's great, man.

It feels like Broadway. It feels like Broadway, and the Broadway people are so kind to each other and supportive, and comedians are not. We're the worst. Fucking standups all hate each other, and they're jealous of each other. So when I see these creative places where people are genuinely rooting for each other, I think it's special. I don't think it's Well, maybe not.

It works a lot better. The rising tide raises all ships.

Yeah. What prompted you to leave Steel Driver?

One of the guys in the band developed a fear of flying.

Oh, fear of flying.

Oh, wow.

I didn't see that coming. I'm waiting for addiction. That's generally what brings a band out.

I had an opinion about what we needed to do, and everybody else in the band had a different opinion, so they got somebody else.

Oh, wow. Wait, wait. Hold on a second. Over a fear of flying, fear that wasn't even yours?

Were you fired? Is that what you're saying? Were you kicked out of the band?

Technically, yes.

Technically.

Oh, no.

I didn't read that in Wikipedia.

That's a regret for them. I probably shouldn't be saying it on here, but that's technically the truth.

Were you hurt?

Well, sure. But I also didn't believe that we were...

Setting the right course.

Right. I was like, Okay, I'll do something else.

Then you form another band, the Johnson Brothers. What's this thing where you don't capitalize the T in your band? Are you an E. E. Cummings fan? Why aren't we capitalizing the T in these bands? Because the steel drivers, it's the steel drivers, right?

Man, you've already thought about it more than I have.

Yeah, the T is not capitalized.

Interesting. But the S and the D are?

They are. And guess what? The T is not capitalized in the Johnson Brothers either, but Johnson and brothers is capitalized. You have no awareness of this? Chris, how could you not notice that your T's are not capitalized? You think it's a typo?

I think maybe it is. I don't know.

It wasn't intentional.

There was not a lot that was intentional for me and a lot of what I've done.

You seem very peaceful.

Yeah.

I wish that were all the way true, but I try to be.

You seem very content.

Content might be elusive.

What are you wrestling with? Did you do New Year's resolutions?

My New Year's resolution was to simplify. I have a tendency to be complicated about everything.

What version of complicated? You're overth everything?

Definitely that. I weigh out things very deliberately and in long and arduous ways that annoy my wife, who's very impulsive and can very quickly make decisions.

You're indecisive?

I prefer the word thoughtful.

Yeah, I like that. Okay.

I like that.

Well, what are we trying to head off? What fear is driving some of this over-planning and over-thinking?

Making mistakes. I don't like to make mistakes.

Okay, I hate to be an arm-chair psychologist, but is this from the stern dad?

I'm sure it is.

It could be. I mean, valedictory and all of these things. No, you're like an overachiever. But at the center of that could be a bunch of different things. You're an overachiever because you don't think you're worthy of love. If you're spectacular, that's my thing. You could be an overachiever also because you got punished for failing. There could be a lot of different motivations.

I don't know if I ever got punished for failing, not by anyone but myself.

Do you beat the shit out of yourself? Sure. Yeah, it's a good hobby, right?

Is it?

I mean, it's time consuming. It It definitely takes up a lot of time. You must acknowledge anyone who's going to sit in a room by themselves in solitary, in focus, and do that repetitively. It's a personality type. A lot of people can't sit by themselves and dedicate that amount of time.

No, a lot of people are uncomfortable with that.

Yeah, I think it's unique, and it's really common among musicians, I think. It's really counterintuitive because you're seeing these people that are like, they're playing in front of 90,000 people. You think they're an extrovert. That's what's presenting, but you realize what gets you there is actually sitting by yourself in a room a lot. It's almost like opposite what the result is.

But you're sitting by yourself in the room for the 90,000 people. That's me throwing that out here right now.

Do you think you have anyisms? Any conditions?

Sure. I'm not a doctor, so I can't diagnose any of those.

Well, perfectionism, it sounds like is at play for sure. If you can't make mistakes.

I mean, I can make mistakes, and I do make many, many, many mistakes.

But they're painful for you.

I I don't like to.

You can't leave here without a diagnosis.

Okay. What ism do you think that I have?

Well, I don't know. You're not giving me a lot to make my theories. It's part of my charm. Let's acknowledge. I think it is part of your charm.

Do you have a hard time opening up? Oh. Maybe that's an ism.

Non-opening-up ism?

I think so. A vulnerable... Maybe it's like a lack. You're obviously vulnerable because your songs are so deep and meaningful.

But that's control as well.

I think that's why. Yeah, control. We're getting there.

We're getting there. We're getting somewhere. We love control. Yeah.

Everyone here in this room loves control.

There's some safety in the space of a song because I'm not having to explain to anybody, and you can apply yourself to it in whatever way you want to. I think that you should. That's what songs are for. We don't have to talk about it. I can make this thing and you can take it and it can be yours and part of your life if you want it to be.

I'm not going to defend it. It is what it is, right? I just wonder where the depth of your music and the range of it and just how much of it there is if Everything is hunking door. There's pain driving that or no, maybe there's not.

Sure. I think a lot of it can be observation of the human condition in general. You can walk outside and, Shit, I passed a homeless dude on the bridge on the way over here. It's not hard to find, whether it's yours or somebody else's.

Do you feel like you take on other people's pain?

No. Their feelings?

Okay.

But I also feel like I am not unaware of it.

But some people are.

I can view it and try to examine it. That's my job as a songwriter is to try to attach to those things or at least examine those things and maybe help people find themselves in it.

This has been my experience a little bit. It used to be really results-oriented because I wanted things. And those things happen and they're really great, and yet they're very temporary and they don't fill you up for a very long time. And I think slowly you start, hopefully, transitioning to the process is the high.

Process is the high. But it's also disappointing when you get this thing, when you reach the moment, and you're like, Oh, shit, that didn't do what I thought it was going to do. I don't take those things in very well. I don't take even the good moments in very well. I need to work on that.

Do you think the shoes always going to drop?

Oh, sure. That's a Kentucky thing. We have this innate genetic component of, we got to make hay with the sunshine or something bad is going to happen.

I was raised largely by my two grandparents that are both from Kentucky. They both moved up. You understand that? Yeah.

What part of Kentucky they're from?

Hazzard.

Okay. Yeah, you really understand that.

Of my grandma's five brothers, one killed another. The other one shot the other, but didn't kill him. And three of them all died in prison. That's the haunchals. The fucking haunchals are wild. I always say our 10-year-old is clearly 12. 5% haunchal because she can fucking let it rip.

As I said earlier, I grew up in Georgia. I was just there. You're the only artist I know that all our friends in LA are so excited we're talking to you, and all my friends in Georgia are so excited we're talking to you. You unify, you span the gamut. That's not the case. That is very rare.

No, people almost lit our studio on fire for having Jason Aldean.

Some people court controversy. That's part of their thing. And some people want to discuss things that aren't about music or make that part of their thing. And it's not part of my thing.

But you're very universal. There's something about your writing that people really gravitate towards, regardless of their specific musical taste. I don't think all our friends are super into country, but they love you.

Yeah. What's right about your music, too, is you can come to it from all these different angles. So, yeah, I have a lot of friends, our friend Charlie Curtis is just like, he would fucking cut off many fingers to just shake your hand. His way into you is very interesting. It's like, definitely he's a very masculine man. He played football at Georgetown and Rice. He's a physical phenom. And you allow him somehow to be this masculine man who is fucking feeling emotion. I think that's the unique gift you're giving to a lot of men. You're singing the international anthem at the Super Bowl, and they fucking cut over, and the coach is bawling. Fucking, Kelsey's crying. The men are crying. You're allowing these men to feel an emote. And that's so rare. And that's just a pocket of your appeal. And then my thing with you is, I hate to be repetitive of Brolin because he interviewed you and said basically the same thing. You're bringing back for me the only country I loved, which is like outlaw country. When I hear your stuff, I'm like, This dude's whaling a parent. That's what you're channeling for me.

Then the women are loving you for some other reason.

It's some other reason. Unbeknownst to me.

The question mark.

No, I don't know. Thanks.

Yeah, I know. There's nothing to say to that. That's probably hard to hear.

I mean, it's not on purpose. I guess that's my question. Is it on purpose? Are you thinking- Am I thinking about who I'm connecting to? Yeah, or I want to make sure I don't... By the way, we think about it. We think about it this show, we don't want to contribute to the divide. We're here to show humanity.

I think that's an important thing to want to connect to. But I also think in a musical space, my job is to connect to the music and then put that out in the world and let people find themselves in it. Yeah, pray for the best. Yeah, and the song doesn't really mean anything. No song means anything until it goes out into the world and people hear it and attach themselves to it and find themselves in it, or it marks a point in their life. That's it. That has zero meaning until that happens.

You have five senses, right? And this thing, music, it's in its own category of you got to call it magic. We have these ears that we're supposed to be listening to Predators for, and we're going to communicate with. Then there's this completely pointless endeavor. Music? Yeah. Making noises that will be sitting somewhere and crying or laughing or partying. You're remembering. We have this one sense that is open to complete nonsense. There's no purpose to it.

It's meant to unify us, though. There is a point to it. The magic point to me is in regards to a certain type of song, but people like sad songs, so they don't feel alone. I think Maybe all songs are that way, and then we want to feel those emotions together. There's a communal thing in that even if you're driving in the car by yourself listening to a song and it's hitting you in a certain way, it's still that communal thing. You're Oh, there's somebody else in the world that understands this other thing that I'm going through, and so I'm not alone all of a sudden. And I think that is the magic of music. It's not some mysterious thing. That is the magic of music is it helps us all be connected in ways that even a conversation or a look or a touch doesn't provide.

I would argue, too, it's the way that we can get a motion from my head into your head the quickest. To me, it's the most succinct It's efficient. Powerful delivery device.

I don't think that's true for everybody, though. I think there are people that I've met in my life who are like, I've never been to a concert. I don't listen to music. Don't do what? I think that's not a value in everybody's household.

They're bad in bed, though, those people, I think. I don't know. You shouldn't say to those people, he must be a terrible lover.

Well, they might be more of a visual artist. They like museums.

Sure, yeah. You got to put Shade on when you're a kid in your car in high school. You got to let that do some of the work for you.

It's also connected to memory music. I think that's also what's so powerful about it. It's the only thing that is capable of transporting you. Time travel.

Okay, now I want to talk about Morgan a little bit. So your wife, Morgan, who you've been married to for 18 years, you guys were working both in songwriting.

She actually had a deal on RCA. Oh, she did? Yeah, she was an artist.

No, her voice is bonkers. I was listening to you guys sing Amanda. I was pretty shook by her voice. Also what a rad duet for you guys to do. Okay, so she bought you a 1979. She's done this a few times. I only know about two of them, but I'm inclined to imagine there's more. You loved this '79 Jeep Cherokee, and she found one for you and bought it?

Well, odd enough, I was looking at a Scout that was in Portland, Oregon, and I was going to buy this thing after my dad passed away. It was gone. Somebody I bought it. I was like, Well, I like this Jeep in Phoenix, too. Let's go do that. That whole trip was the impetus. I wrote Traveler on that trip. If we had driven from Portland, I might have made a very different first record. But we drove from Phoenix across the desert. It was a different thing.

I don't know if this is apocryphal, but you're driving and the sun's coming up and Morgan's sleeping and Traveler hits you, yeah?

Yeah. It was right before we got to Gallup, New Mexico. I wrote the whole song, driving, and then I had to go inside and figure out how to play it when we got to the hotel in Gallup. You're driving a '79 Cherokee. There's not a lot of other things you can do. Requires your full focus. It requires your full attention and both hands on the wheel most of the time.

But she bought you that, and then she also bought you, You Have One of Wayland's Guitars.

I have that, too.

That's a fucking nice present.

That's cool.

If I'd known you had that painted on here, I would have brought it with me.

I was pretty jealous when I saw Brolin holding that. He's my higher power. I just can't get enough.

There's something about him. And, Robbie Turner, that played on our first record, played with Wayland in the Highwayman. So he has all these great way on stories, too. And, of course, Robbie passed away.

You're now the holder of these stories.

Maybe. There's a lot of better people to tell them than me. Country music is great, that era in particular, because those guys were more rock and roll than the most rock and roll guys you could talk about. But a lot of those stories don't exist in the public way because it's this understood rule that they don't the public about how rock and roll those guys really were. It was just nuts.

Oh, yeah. Nuts, nuts.

They were just nuts, nuts. When I think of what I like about country music, that's the era I like as well. The Outlaw, Wayland & Willie and Hager.

Yeah, I was a young man. I was like, Oh, this is dangerous. It was dangerous.

It was dangerous, which is weird. My dad loved all that stuff, too. But my dad was like the straightest arrow. I'm just like, Why do you love this stuff? It's everything that you're not. Maybe that's why he loved it.

Yeah, exactly.

It was a real thing. Those guys were real, and Willie Nelson was the real deal.

Yeah. Have you seen this show that Mike Judges does called tales from the Two of Us? I watched all of them. Every one of those guys shot somebody other than Whael and I, I think, in that first season. But the best part of that Whael and Doc was when they're interviewing, I think, the drummer for the band at the time. He goes, Yeah, we used to have this routine before we go out on stage. We want to make sure everyone's on the same page chemically. So I'd ask, Steve, how many are you on? A four. Okay, good. I'm on four, too. Mike, what are you on? They're talking about math. I'm on four. Great. Haas, what are you at? Twelve. The whaling was always four after whatever they were on.

Not math, but I do believe in being in the same chemical space. You can't have one guy drinking tequila and somebody else smoking weed. Another guy shooting dope. You're on different musical spectrums. You're riding different waves. You got to be... You got to keep it the same. I do believe in that.

Have you struggled with any of that stuff?

Out of 10, what's your addiction level, do you think, naturally?

Naturally?

Yeah. I'm a nine, just to let you. I'll go first. You're a nine? I'm a nine.

Five. I don't ever feel like I have to do something. I just want to do something. Sure.

It's never gotten away from you.

No, not really.

You don't have the gene. You're our age. You got to quit or not. I had to quit. It was untenable.

I still drink. I still have a cocktail every now and then.

You'll have a nice Traveler whiskey.

Absolutely. I'm not here to advertise.

But I am. I'm really saddened by the fact that I can't drink whiskey because I would love to try Traveler because it It sounds like exactly what I would be in the market for.

I would have brought something if I thought somebody wanted to try it, but I wanted to be respectful in the space.

That was nice.

Oh, no, I'm very pro-drinking. I don't want everyone drinking. We wouldn't be friends.

Well, I think it's good for some people and it's not a great thing for others.

Yeah. You get to see it really up close and personal in the music biz or the film biz.

Yeah, and you know who those guys are immediately. You're like, Yeah, maybe it's not for you.

Yeah, exactly.

I enjoy it. But I can certainly get obsessed with things more than I would call it, like nuances of vintage things or weird guitar things.

I was going to say your guitar collection is the giveaway.

If you want to call that an addiction, then I'm probably a 25.

Yeah.

I definitely have lanes. I don't feel like they've ever crossed over into a lane where it's fucking my life up.

I'm jealous. Five is the perfect number because it means you've let it rip a lot. Sure. Yeah. You want to let it fucking rip and not take you down. That's the sweet spot of it.

Well, especially if you don't like making mistakes and you control.

I find those things are a release, too. Well, exactly.

What I was going to say you should be an addict because the release of control is the joy for me of being high.

I don't want to celebrate being an addict in any way, but I do enjoy getting a buzz. I think that's fun. Yes. And a relief for some people. It is a relief, and it's maybe even a stress management. I'll probably get some letters about that. But in a way that it's like, okay, that's a reset. I'm cool. I'm good for a while. I don't pick it up, any of those things. To cope with anything necessarily. It's more of an interest or something I enjoy.

One of your hobbies. One of my hobbies. One of your hobbies.

One of a few, yeah.

Martinis are one of my hobbies, so I get it.

What's your Martini go to?

Hendrix Martini, Lemon Twist, No, Vermouth.

Okay. So when she's over, that's where you got to serve. You got to have all those things.

I'll take a whiskey. I'll take an old-fashioned.

What was your whiskey before you had your own?

My favorite was E. H.

Taylor. Grand Pappies. What is it?

See, the reason I got in business with the Sazerac Buffalo people, they make all that stuff. They make E. H. Taylor. Travel to the same master distiller as Pappie Van Winckel and Dweller and all that awesome rare, hard to get.

There was a Pappie heist. Did you see this? I watched a doc on this Millions of dollars.

I work with those guys.

Oh, right? Yeah. So you would know everything.

I don't know everything, but they talk about it. They're like, Yeah, this is an inside job. These fucking guys were the thing.

They were draining the barrels and filling them with water. And there's millions of dollars of this crazy rare.

They take it very seriously. Some of It takes 25 years to make. It's a long game thing. It's very cool and it's very old world. One of the closest things we have in this country to this real heritage thing coming from Kentucky. It's culture. It's American culture.

We got whiskey, we got hip hop, we got country. We got a handful of things. Jazz. Yeah, jazz. Blues. Maybe most importantly, jazz. Okay, after you do Traveler, it comes out, it's wildly successful. You are at the CMAs, I think. Is that where you do the Timber Lake performance? Yeah. Okay, so you... Now, I'm not allowed to say this out loud, but Dave Co was the other obsession. I've probably seen Dave Co 15 times.

Why don't you allowed to say that a lot?

He's a pretty known racist. He's got some rough songs that didn't...

Yeah, it's probably not a badge you wear on your sleeve too much.

But boy, when I was 20 and drunk, nothing was more fun than going to a Dave Co show.

I went to one. Do you have his Book of Poems?

No. I need his Book of... Oh, boy.

It was like frat boys and bikers. That was the crowd. I went to this show in Lexan, Kentucky. But on the merch table, he had David Allan Co. Short stories and poems. I didn't have the money to get it. I told this story to a friend of mine, this is a Texas act, and he somehow found this merch book, and he sent me a copy of it. So I have a copy of it. I don't know that I've read many of the poems.

Kids probably shouldn't read that book, your kids. Maybe keep that up high on a shelf.

As weird of a dude as he is, he's also written some wonderful songs.

Incredible. No, he's a fucking hell of a musician.

Great writer. Obviously problematic. You've heard the- Everybody's heard the awful stuff. The other one who is aware of him is aware of the other awful things. But there are some also very wonderfully written beautiful country songs.

Anyways, he made Tennessee Whisky very famous, but he didn't write Tennessee Whisky.

No, he didn't write it. He had the first cut on it, and George Jones had the hit on it.

Oh, okay. George Jones made it.

But I knew it from Cove.

I only know the Dave Cover's. Anyways, you sing Tennessee Whisky with Timber Lake. Did you already know him? Did that pair seem crazy to you at first?

I mean, I called him to do it. I had met him. Somehow he saw me on a YouTube video or something. The first time I actually met him, it was his birthday, and his wife called and said, Hey, it's hard for me to find experiences that my husband hasn't had. Would you fly to Montana and play for his birthday party? I'm like, all of a sudden, I'm the experience that you're I was like, Okay. His birthday is in January.

Your wife's is, too, right?

25th, yeah.

Dax's birthday was yesterday.

Yeah. He told me 51, or his daughter's told me actually 51. I flew up there. I couldn't believe how cold it was in Montana in January. Have you been in Montana in January?

Not in January, but I've been in Wyoming, and yeah, it's negative 18.

I'm inside by a fire with battery-powered socks and every stitch of clothing that I own on, on. My bones hurt.

It's not your climate.

I'm not built for it.

Don't let the beard fool you. This is no grizzly Adam shit.

Well, I mean, maybe you get used to it. I don't know. We're there for a day. My wife's with me. We're like, What are we doing here? This is odd.

There must have been tons of stars at his birthday party.

Well, this is when we get to it. I think I'm going to play for this party. It's time to go do the party. We get on this horse-drawn Santa Claus sleigh. Oh, wow. We go up a mountain, and I'm thinking, There's grizzly bears up here. Who knew what we're going to run into? We go to this cabin with no electricity. What? Zero electricity. We go in, there's one guy cooking on an 1800s woodbar.

A potbelly stove? Stove.

Okay. That's what's happening.

He really wanted an experience he had never had.

Okay, well, listen, the room, not much bigger than where we're sitting right now. Just a small table. I'm like, What is happening? I felt like I was getting-Getting punk. I was getting punk.

Yeah. I was like, This is just weird. He was the most famous punk person. He was.

He finally shows up and it's him and his best friend and maybe his cousin. It's like six, seven people. I played a little bit of music.

Real quick, does that make you nervous? Like, the smaller the group, the more nervous or less? You already said you don't get nervous. You can say bizarre. You're allowed to say bizarre and you don't want to offend anyone. It is strange. It's crazy bizarre.

But cool.

Absolutely.

I played, and then he's like, Hey, man, sit down. I wound up just sitting down, and we hung out that night. Had some whiskey. We were friendly, and then we went back to his house and definitely had some whiskey. Had some pappy that night. There was I'm going to get a cake there, and I want to cut a piece of this cake because I had a few issues. I went, What are you doing cutting this cake? I looked at the tag and Alicia Keys had sent him the cake, and I'm like, Oh. He's like, No, man, it's cool. Eat the cake. I was like, Okay. That was it. We knew each other from then on. We had talked a little about music, and we talked about doing things together, and we're friendly. We went out to dinner a few times. We had this record, and the CMAs were coming up. We got nominated for a few things, and they were going to offer me a slot to play. And we're like, You got to call ask him to do it. That's the way you do it.

And really quick, so that's my most hated thing in the world is to ask someone for a favor. How easy does that come? I can't do it.

But I also knew that she was correct. I said, If there's ever a time, he's going to say no. I was like, Hey, man, would you want to come do this. He's like, Absolutely. So we got on the phone with the producer. Time on television is so precious to these guys making these shows. Justin was a straight face on the telephone. He's like, We need eight and a half minutes, which is an eternity on television. Yeah. Had he not been on that phone call, that would have been an immediate, absolutely not. But it was just like, Yeah, you guys can have eight and a half minutes. We got eight and a half minutes for what was essentially my first appearance on that show. Yes.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, If You Dare. Now, did you get nervous for that?

No, because We rehearsed two days before and we dug in and we had it dialed. It was the best possible version of whatever we could have done. I knew that he's so pro and his band and everybody. We all dug in and we were prepared.

I've heard this from a few people we had Anna Kendrick on, and she was talking about having to do those troll movies. She went in one time and she had a really bad cold. Justin's just like, Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to do this, blah, blah, blah. She was just talking about, to your point, what a fucking pro the dude is. He's been doing it since he was a child, and he took it seriously.

100%. He took Seriously. A hundred %. And he intuitively knows what to do all the time. Spooky.

And then this prick is the best SNL guest host of all time. Fuck this guy. He's supposed to be good on SNL on top of all this other stuff. Dance like that and be good on SNL. But the power of those performances is pretty staggering because also that's the Luke Holmes story, too. Luke Holmes has this performance with Tracy Chapman. That is a big turning point for you, professionally, that performance.

We spent a long time building the fire, but that threw a match on it. Yeah, right. We had some shows booked on the West Coast and thousand seat theaters and things like that. We never played on the West Coast at that point, and they were gone like that. Very quickly escalated from that point.

It's funny how many people have this similar story where it feels overnight on the outside, but you're 15 years into it or 12 years into it, and you've had a really substantial writing career. So for you, it is incremental, but from the outside, it's like, Oh, wow, this is like a light switch.

That is definitely the view to the passerby on the television.

Do you think because you had had little tastes of success along the way that by the time this thing came around, you had a little practice? Were you able to take in that moment in the ways that you would like to have?

No. We won a bunch of awards and things that night, too. We weren't supposed to win any of those things.

Albums sold 2 million. Everything's fucking on fire at that moment.

Yeah, it was very quickly just a different ball game. In the moment, there was a lot of celebratory thing backstage. It was a very surreal moment for me and everybody had worked with us. It was an unforgettable... I think everybody who makes a jump somewhere in their career can pinpoint moments, and that's definitely one for us.

Some people handle it well, and some people don't handle it well.

I don't think I would have handled it well.

Had you not been married and stable and had some practice?

Yeah, I was 38 or something.

Yeah. I know. You imagine giving yourself that whole experience at 21 years old or any of the ones I had. No, I'd be dead. I would have burnt the whole place down on a weekend.

Some people aren't meant to handle that, and the universe was looking out for me in in a different way. But also I appreciate it in different ways than somebody might that was 19.

You already made a good living. It's not like you're going to experience money for the first time. You're going to experience a lot more money, but you got to practice with some of this stuff.

A little bit. What I didn't get to practice for was people driving up to your house or a couple of us coming by. That was very hard for me.

I was going to say you don't strike me as someone that would love the fame aspect of all this.

No, I don't enjoy that. I don't enjoy it for my children.

Do you feel like you should have done the kiss version?

Kiss version?

Full paint.

Full basement. Listen, those guys had something figured out. Those guys were marketing geniuses.

What you do have going for you is you have this easy top thing, which is you could probably shave your beard at some point and go back to anonymous.

That's my retirement plan.

Yeah, I think that's a solid one.

Do you think you're trying to be invisible with your beard and your hair?

I've had the beard and hair a long time, and I'm sure there is some shield aspect.

Some hiding.

I had a grill blow up on me, and it was protective in that way. So it protected me from fire.

Well, you had a barbecue that slowed. Did it catch the hair on fire? Oh, yeah.

It took hair off here and hair all the way off this arm. I had a gap in my beard for a minute.

Were you lighting it and the gas had build up in it?

I was sleepy, and it was a rental house. I thought I had lit it and I turned them all on. I was like, Oh, shit, I didn't light it. It just filled that fucker.

Oh, shit. Yeah. Oh, boy. Loud explosion? Yeah, it was dumb. Then you got to come in and say to your wife, Look what I just did. Yeah. Now you got to worry about me grill him.

Well, then you feel the skin peeling off your face and all that stuff. You're like, Oh, shit, I just made a mistake.

I wrongly was like, he's got this beard. Anytime someone has a beard, you're like, Oh, they're probably covering up stuff. I'm certainly covering up stuff. But I saw pictures of him without the beard. You mean physically? Fucking strong chin. He doesn't need a beard. I need it. This bastard's like, he's just sitting on a great chin. Okay, well, even need it. He didn't even need it.

Even more reason to me than I think it's an emotional beard.

You think it's an emotional beard? I'm going to go ahead and say it as.

Did you Did you have any anxiety after Traveler came out and it was so fucking successful and you had such a swell? Did you have any anxiety about the next album?

No, but I did have an anxiety around just the amount of attention. My goal in making that record was to get to make another record. I had this very indie mentality. I sell 20, 25,000 records. I can keep playing, and I play pretty good shows, and the world will be all right. People will never say this about corporate entities, but I have to say this about Universal. I had a failed single before Traveler that wasn't on Traveler. I just came to Cindy May, but we went to lunch and I said, Hey, can I just make a record? I just want to make a record and put it out and go play. That's how I know how to do it. She was like, Okay, that was allowed, and that's not normal process. It's usually like, have a hit single, and then you can make a record.

In the signal that didn't do well, it also was expected to do well.

I signed a record deal, and it was a different of the company. I made a whole other record. Previous to that, the head of the label came in to listen to it, sat there, listened to the whole thing. Then he turned around, I love it, but I'm not going to be here next week.

Oh, boy.

Capital and Universal merged.

Why didn't even listen to it?

Because he signed me. Luke Lewis is a music guy?

That was a dumb question. But if you're getting fired.

I thought it was a really classey move, even though it was disappointing.

Now that I've thought it through, that was the right move.

When the merger all happened, it was nine months of radio silence for me, which usually when those you're like, All right, I'm a goner. I'm going to go back to writing songs. I was pushing 40. I had promised myself I wouldn't tour anymore if I was 40 and not really making a dent. Mike Dungen, the new record label head, comes in, listens to the record. He's like, I don't hear it. That was just like, All right.

Do you agree with him now? That record exists somewhere.

It does.

Do you think it's much different in quality than your other albums?

I made it in a very different way. It was a very built record, more than a live record. I'm playing all the stuff on it. It was a different record. It was where I was at at the time, and I don't know that it was bad. I'm not embarrassed of anything on it.

Did it dent your confidence at all or no?

I mean, I disagreed.

That's the preferred outcome.

I'm also aware that his job was to run the business the best way that he knows how to run a business. If that meant it wasn't for him, I missed the mark.

What happened when you played Traveler? Did he come in and sit and listen to Traveler? Did you get to have a round two?

For some reason, he was out. He would say I went around him. And we're cool now. It's all good.

This shit is the same in movies. I directed a movie at Warner Brothers. Right before it comes out, they fire the president. They bring in a new president. The new president is not incentivized for the old president shit to work. He's incentivized for his new shit that he green-lit. And you're like, I'm just fucked. They're not going to promote this movie.

It's just pointy. There's a lot of great things that get squashed in regime changes sometimes, and that's just the way it goes.

There's more business happening than people realize.

And timing of things. There's a great Chris Knight record that came out a long time ago that Frank Liddell produced that I love, but that record came out and then the whole record label shut down. It got squashed, but that was a great record. It just was unfortunate business time. Me. Things like that happen all the time.

Back to your luck thing. Half the game's luck.

Maybe more than half of it. I think it's probably 90% luck.

The better comp is really, I can't imagine, are you in the Formula One at all?

I did do a song for that movie.

Oh, yes, you did. That's right.

Yeah, you have a song in F1.

I got scared to death. I went to the race in Las Vegas. Why humans want to go that fast? I don't understand. Okay. You were right up on the fence and you're just like, this doesn't feel safe even for me to watch.

No, it doesn't feel like physics would allow for this thing to happen. That's what's cool about it. A car can't go around a turn at 190 miles an hour. It just did.

But I guess it did.

Have you ever gotten a car with one of those guys?

Yeah. I hosted this show Top Gear for a couple of years. I raced.

But you drive something like that?

I've never been in a Formula One car, but I have ridden with several Formula One drivers in cars. And yeah, always going into turn one, you're going, well, he ate the farm on this one. We're not making it through this turn. And then all of a sudden you're exiting the turn, you're like, I don't think that can happen. Physics wouldn't allow. Yeah, they're in another level. But the reason I think the analogy is good is the car, unfortunately, is 90% of it. But that's not to say it doesn't matter if you're max for a step and it fucking matters. He's head and shoulders above, but he needs that 90%. I think the same is for your thing and my thing, which is like, you got to be max for a step, but fuck, you need the right car. You need the 90% of luck in friendships and all this other shit.

Yeah, the right people around you. I can't say that enough. You've said it a lot.

I really, really like it.

Yeah, I like it, too.

I know we were sitting here talking about the individual thing, but I do feel like a lot of what I do might put my name on a marquee or on something else. You're talking about, But you wrote the songs, you're saying all these things, but I didn't record the things. I went in the studio and Vances sitting there pressing the button. Dave and my wife were telling me when they thought the take was right. I'm not making things without Dave. Not really.

I've also watched you guys talk to each other, and there's definitely some spooky shit going on.

We understand each other in a lot of weirdos. Soulmates. We're brothers in a lot of ways. Then so JT and Derek, the guys have been in my band from day one, played on the record from day one. Those things are important, and those things make what we do a lot more special than just my name being on it or whatever I bring to it. The specialness of all those people involved is important.

Do you have some guilt about being the name on the marquee?

No, somebody's got to do it. I'm not trying to act like I'm unworthy here or something like that.

What I have a lot of is survivor's guilt, which is like, I over the last 30 years, worked with so many fucking brilliant people that didn't get lucky or didn't know the right person on the right day. I was exposed to how many people moved to LA and were talented and worked their asses off. I have that guilt, personally. Where it's like, I don't know, man, there are four other guys in my comedy troupe that were better than me, and I don't know why they're not rich. And it's not fair.

It's not. The world is not fair. And not that I think that that's right, but I'll take it.

Sure. Yeah, exactly. They're going to give it to someone. I'm going to volunteer.

I appreciate it. I like it to be me.

Yeah. I'm sure I do have some guilt about that.

Yeah, I don't have imposter syndrome. I just can't recognize that these people are every bit as good as me and some better. And it didn't happen. And it's heartbreaking. That hurts my soul a little bit.

Well, No, but it's that whole timing thing that I keep talking about. That's luck, and that's whatever it is that I do or you do or anybody does that gets lucky and successful. We happen to be filling some need for consumers or for the world at large, and that's important, too. You can feel gratitude for that and maybe guilt that somebody else didn't get to fill it, but that was our calling. That's the way the cookie crumpled. That's how it shook out. And that's okay. I don't think we have to feel too bad about it. No. I don't feel bad about it.

You shouldn't, and I shouldn't, but I do. It's that simple. I run into dudes that are struggling, and I'm like, Fuck, dude, this is not fair. You shouldn't be struggling at all. Just two more career-y questions. One is, I think it's interesting that you've gone in and you've worked with Taylor and Adele, and you're on both their albums singing. What is that experience like?

Some of these collaboration things were things that happened in COVID. They're me on the other side of a Zoom screen. Obviously, you get honored when you get asked to be on anybody's record. It was such a compliment. Particularly people who are as well loved as those two ladies.

Did you watch the Taylor Dock that just came out?

I have not seen. I did go to that show. I took my kids to that show. Me too.

What a fucking show, Eric.

Oh, man, it was crazy. Every song was the production budget of most people's whole show. Mine included.

That's what's so cool about the doc is you really get into the nitty-gritty about the show and how they did it. It doesn't matter if you like her music or don't like her music. If you don't respect her after watching that, to go away. No, there's no way.

It's an insane amount of work and energy to spend on something, to delegate and to trust and to manage. It's unfathomable. Only a handful of people can pull that off, and she's one of them.

The leadership, to me, was such a huge... It's like what you've been saying about all the people, how many people it takes. She really highlighted that in this. It was about her, but it wasn't about her. It was about the dancers. It was so cool.

Because none of it happens without all those people.

I was blown over the stamina. She could fucking go.

We talked to her briefly after the show, and she was like, I would sing the show and run for three hours on a treadmill to get ready for this. I'm like, I'm going to run for three hours on a treadmill Never.

Save my life.

Wow. I know. It's wild.

I just want to thank you. Our whole summer was a song to sing on the boat. I got videos posted of Kristen dancing in that song. What a song. You know what I love about it, too, is I think I was in the dark about what a badass Miranda is. Oh, she's amazing. Yeah, I just was in the dark. She's so great.

We've been friends for a long time. She's filled in a few times when Morgan had to go do other things and sing on award shows with me. We've always written songs together. When I first moved to town as a songwriter, she cut one of the songs I moved to town with. She cut a song I wrote when I was 18. Oh, wow. Nobody's fool. We've known each other a long time, and she's always been really good to me and a great friend. It was cool to get to do something like that with her.

It's a very full circle. If she sings one of your songs you wrote when you're 18, and then you get to do a song with her.

Again, those things are more pure and I feel better because they're real things. It's not because somebody threw us together.

Some master producer didn't think this up.

It's not something somebody dreamed of. Sometimes those things work out, too. Okay.

Your chair, this is the cuteest thing. Your mom and dad had a dinette set, and then there's a chair that you loved, and you have taken this chair with you your whole life.

That chair moved to town with me. I had a chair in an army sack full of clothes.

Packing up the car, making This chair is really comical.

It fits in the back seat.

Is it a wooden chair?

No, it's got a loose-side back and it's like chrome. When I was a kid, the seat was Canary yellow vinyl, but my mom recovered it in the '80s. It's very multi-colored tweed or something.

It almost looks Smithsonian, but not yet.

It was your chair?

Well, it is now. Okay. It was just one of the chairs. There are three other chairs somewhere.

I don't know where all the- I got to get my hands on one of these fuckers.

I'm going to be in the Smithsonian.

Maybe my brother has one. I don't know.

But you brought this chair and you've written most of the songs.

I've recorded in the studio with that chair. That chair comes every time I'm in the studio.

Yeah, the chair's everywhere. That's so sweet. First of all, it's just very, very sweet. But then I started thinking, are you superstitious? Because you also have, you're playing the Gibson guitar you bought for $400. You're still playing that.

I don't know if I'm superstitious as much as I'm a creature of habit.

It's control, right? It's like all the things I can't control are what they are, and the things I can't control, I'm going to control.

It's a controlled environment thing for sure.

I sit in this chair, I play this guitar.

I built one of the first stages when I had enough of a production budget. I built a giant diffuser to try to control sound on stage.

So that you could hear it right?

Yes. We have a patent on it. If you ever look it up, it looks like some Mad Max Thunderdome. Oh, It was a good thing. Crazy to build. All these pieces are like 1,200 pounds a piece. It's a diffuser that we carried around on stage. It was so stupid to build, but I had to hear it. I had to see if it would work because I was trying to control environments. Because most live environments aren't sonically pleasant. I don't use any ears. I use floor monitors. I'm always trying to control the environment in a way that maybe I shouldn't. I gave up on that. I had a different thing that had all these moving motors. That didn't work. I'm all the time drawing shit on napkins and making people who know how to do stuff, try to figure it out.

See if it's possible.

Does this work?

I love also you have... This was fun. People should watch this. This is your essential things that you care about. This is a video I watched. You're My dad's knife collection in this knife roll is so special. I got very nostalgic seeing that.

What was it about the knives?

Where I grew up, and maybe some in Georgia, I don't know if they do this in Georgia as well, people would give you a knife as a sign of respect. And my dad had received a bunch of these knives over the years.

They're pocket knives. They're like little pocket knives.

Oh, yeah. See, let's get a visual.

I was sad when I learned this that I didn't have time to go out and get a cool pocket knife to give to you.

This is not one of his. I carry things like this. Yeah. I'll rub the back of them. It's almost like it's a fidget toy for me. There's a comfort in it. It's a connection. I have something that belonged to my grandfather as well, my mom's dad.

You're the dream dad. I got lucky. My dad collected elephants. Elephants? Elephants.

Like actual elephants?

Real elephant. No, no, no. Figurine's fucking statues. I don't know. In probably a now in retrospect, I don't even know if he liked them that much, but we all believed he liked them. So every Father's Day, every-He got an elephant. You knew what to do. He's like, I got to go to the and find me an elephant. The trunk had to be up. That was good luck.

Where did that come from?

I don't know. By the time I'm conscious, I already know my father likes elephants, and there's already 10 figurines in the house.

But you never asked why I liked it.

He just said that he learned they were good luck if the trunk was up.

Because I grew up, my mom had this porcelain elephant.

He would have wanted to get his hands on that.

It looked like a really nice China. Yeah. They were painting green all over. It was like a side table. It had a table on it.

It was functional. Yeah, it was a functional elephant. Fuck, that would have made his year if I could have got my hands on that thing.

I think that thing's in a storage unit. Hopefully, I can find it.

But anyways, your boys are blessed because you have four boys and they know you're going to get a pocket knife.

Yeah, knives in cars and guitars.

Yeah, it's great. Of the venues you've played, Super Bowl, SNL twice, talk shows, is there a favorite live experience you've had?

Super Bowl. One of those times I felt nervous, and I don't often feel nervous.

Because that's a scary song, right?

Scary No control. I controlled what I could.

Yeah. There's a lot of moving parts to that.

Well, I made it the least amount of moving parts I could. I played it with just me and the guitar. I didn't get the band. I didn't do a pre-tape. I didn't do any that stuff. I wanted to go out there and see if I could just do it. That's nerve-wracking for that level of television show to go live like that.

It's rare you can fuck up in front of 40 million people.

You can, though. I've done it. But yeah, that was special. I played when the Letterman Show was going off the air, and when I was in Steel Divers, we got to play on Konan, one of them was a favorite show of mine. Yeah.

Okay, now I'm going to hit you with the weirdest thought I've had through all this reading about you and watching interviews and listening to your voice a lot. Do you know how the old mining happened, like hydro mining? I mean, the way they mined in the 1800s, you start with a huge diameter pipe. Let's say it's 4 feet and you're running water through it. Then you reduce that to 2 feet, and that builds pressure. Then you reduce that to a foot, and then you reduce it to 6 inches. By the time it's coming out, spraying at the side of the hill, it's fucking a bazillion pounds of pressure.

I know nothing about that.

Okay, but you get the concept. I was looking at your nose. I'm like, Chris has the cuteest little nose for what a big guy is. He has this tiny little nose. I did not see this coming. He's got this big chest, and he's like this big guy. It's all starting down here in the fucking diaphragm. And by the time you work all that up and send it through this tiny little button nose, I think that's your magic sound.

That's a wild theory.

It's a huge to ask. Have you observed... Oh, my God. Go ahead and respond to this theory.

I'm sorry, I don't have one. Keep going with your button nose theory. Yeah, my theory.

Your hydraulic mining, that's what you are as a musician. Over How many of these 25 years of sitting with musicians and working with musicians, have you observed patterns? Have you noticed weird things like, Oh, people with this physicality tend to sound this way? Have you picked up these just from doing it so much?

I don't know if physicality, I've picked that up. Certainly where people are from probably plays into how they play. People from New Orleans have a thing. People from Memphis have a thing. People from Florida have a thing. There's a rock and roll thing that happens there. You can't put your finger on them, but you can't say they definitively have this thing. But they definitely come with a different slant, whether it's the pocket that they play with or the way they hear things or the way they pronounce things when they sing or where they sing things. Maybe that's a pedestrian evaluation of music It's interesting to say, I'm reading a book right now.

It's talking about cities and the magic of cities. And it was using as an example, they have tried to start tech companies in New York. They're well financed. They don't work. They work in Silicon Valley. Finance works in New York. We don't really know why. Other places have tried it. But there's all these cities who have signature industries that become their DNA, and they can't be done elsewhere.

I can't explain that. Yeah.

It's just a fast fascinating thing that's very similar to this. If you're a musician, you're also a product of something. It can't be replicated. Okay, my last thing I want to say is, what is the current fuel you're burning for creativity? Because I imagine it has to evolve dramatically from arriving here hungry and ambitious and fearful and all these things. You have to evolve as the thing starts working out. There's all these very dramatic, youthful things that create art. As your life stabilizes what you're trying to get it to do, what drives the creativity?

I think it's probably at a bit of a crossroads in that I don't know when I'm going to make another record or write another song. I'm probably not really in the mood. That's okay with me. Probably not okay with managers and record labels and people like that, but that's okay with me. I don't know how much longer I'll even go play. I don't know. Oh, God.

Well, I think he and I are at the same age. I'm also really just contemplating what a spectacular life I've had. What do I want the rest of it to be? I want to have made a really thoughtful decision.

Yeah, I want to make a thoughtful decision about what I do with the rest of the time that I have on the Earth. I got babies. I got some that are almost out of the house, and they gave up a lot for me to be sitting here with you and doing things. I owe them some things, some time in particular. I've done more than I ever set out to do. I used to say this about playing the Ryman Ottorium. My dream used to be to play the Ryman Ottorium and sell it out very early after the Timberlake moment. We played it three nights in a row and sold it out. I said, Well, now I have to get a new dream. What's the new dream phase? What's the new dream? Yeah. I do think it's important to find that. I think for me, fuel is the search. I'm going to have to search for something. I'm going to have to hunt for something. I don't know what that is or where it's going to come from.

Well, look, I'm in the market for rich friends in their 50s who want to retire and have funds. So I know very few people. What are we going to do? Yes, and I think we're virtually neighbors.

I am not in my 50s yet. Thank you very much.

You'll be there in two fucking seconds, my friend.

I'm not saying I'm hanging them on my spurs. I'm just saying I'm looking for the fire, and I want the fire to lead. That's more elusive now than it used to be.

Are you on testosterone?

No.

I'm on testosterone.

How much, man? All of it.

I need to back it off a little bit. Whatever they got. I tell you, it was a nine on the adding scale. No, my numbers are really responsible, actually. But I will say, I was having this really crisis. Eight years ago, I had directed a movie, it didn't work out. I'm like, I don't know, man. I don't know. Maybe I did enough.

Well, I do think that I've done enough. Yes. It's not about doing something else. It's about, for me, wanting to do something else. I think I owe it to the people who might listen to what I do or come see me play live or any of those things that they get 100% of whatever I've got left in me. If they're paying money for a ticket or a record or whatever it is, I feel very resolute in that. If I don't think that I can deliver on that, I have to evaluate that, too.

I'm going to start you on for 0. 4 million. No, I like your answers. Now your passion is going to shoot back alive.

We're going to make six records a year.

We don't need to manufacture passion.

It'll show itself. But you don't even want it for the results. The feeling of I want to devour something, I want to conquer something, I want to take something on. That's just a good feeling. Forget the outcome of it. It's like, I like feeling that way.

Why don't you want to feel like you can?

I started feeling like I couldn't. I have a little of that. I was just like, I don't know if I care about it.

Well, maybe you just need a second. It's okay to take a break.

No, he needs testosterone. Oh, my God. I'm going to give you your first shot. Oh, no.

You got some extra.

I'm always- Get me some of that testosterone. I always roll it back up. Chris, again, truly, we get to talk to a ton of people. I was just very, very excited to get to sit with you. Of all your stuff, it's just your spirit to me screams out when you perform, and it's just so beautiful. I'm really grateful. I get to cross-pollinate.

Man, thank you for having me, and thanks for taking the time. Yeah.

This was really lovely. Thank you.

I want you to have peace and contentment, and I also want to make 10 or so more albums. So however you accomplish- I agree. How are you going to accomplish all of that? All right, be well. Everyone, go today and buy as much Traveler Whisky as you can. Yeah. And fucking- I sure will. Let it rip. You're thinking about quitting, take your tour bus out to the desert with a case of Traveler Whisky, and it'll set you straight. Chris, thank you so much for coming, and I look forward to our retirement together. Yeah, man. Sounds good. Stay tuned for the fact check so you can hear all the facts that were wrong. How are you feeling?

Good.

Are you tore up?

As in tired?

Tired, hungover, party hard.

I'm not hungover at all. No. No, I'm not hungover. As far as my consumption, I had a teeny at the awards, and then I got one at the Netflix party, but I only had one sip because it wasn't the I like that.

What was wrong with it?

I'm particular. What does it got to be? It's a Hendrix Martini. Oh, Jimi Hendrix? Lemon twist. Okay. No, Vermouth. I'm extra bruised if I can get that. I have to see what the environment is if someone can take that.

What's extra bruised?

Shaken, a little icy.

Oh, like chunky?

Some ice shards.

Oh, ice shards.

Just a little I like it really cold.

Oh, wow. There's so much to it. How long does it take them to make this when they do it right?

No, if they know their stuff, 8 to 10 minutes. I'm just kidding.

12, 13. I don't know. I don't order one at 8: 00, and it arrives at 8: 40 to the table. If they're good. I don't know what they're doing.

They do it right. Yeah, no, it's fast. But so there was a really cute little martini bar thing right next to where we were standing, sitting.

At the Netflix part?

.

Okay.

And I was like, Oh, I'll get one of those. And I was like, Do you have Hendrix? And he was like, Oh, no, they're pre-batched. And immediately I was like, Uh-oh.

And he said, But they're really- Is that the version of a microwave? Is that the equivalent since I'm out of the scene.

Okay. Pre-batch is, they make it ahead of time in a big container- Thermos? Where you put your spaghettios, and then they pour it into glasses for you. A lot of places do pre-batch. That's not for me.

You just gave me the best blast from the past memory. Well, I never had that set up, but other kids did. His mothers were at home. And boy, I swear sometimes they'd pop that lid and there was still steam coming out. It held the heat. I know. This son of a bitch is having a hot spaghetti dinner next to me. I know. In a thermos. And did you have the half-size thermos?

There's havesies. I'm only saying this because my mom will be mad if I don't say it because you just protected your mom as you should, and now I have to protect my mom because she also worked. She would be like, Hey, I wasn't. I worked, too.

Because you didn't have it either.

No, I had it, but not all the time, but I had it every now and then. You know my mama was making me lunch.

Your mother, really. She also had another person helping her make some money and stuff.

Oh, money? Yes. I was like, She didn't help with lunch. As you know, my mom's sick. It was just subway every day. Yeah.

My mom was an overtime queen.

I know. I just wanted to be clear because you said.

Now I just got to be defending my mother like, round two.

I know. It's a cycle here.

Yeah. Nor does she even buy that. No, that's not true. I think when we go grocery shopping. There were a couple of splurges. David and I could both pick out one, two liter of soda occasionally.

Oh, that's nice.

Then the other thing could be like, I could pick out two cans of Chef Boy Rdee. Okay, yeah. Yeah, ravioli all the way.

I love the ravioli.

I would put it in my mouth and I'd deconstruct it with my teeth and tongue so that I would scoop out the little ball of meat with my tongue. I really was a psychopath with the way I consumed it, and I loved it.

Yeah. You could have picked spaghettias, but you went ravioli. We were mainly a ravioli Chef Boyardee house, too.

Well, raviolis, I believe, are Franco-American brand.

Oh, I thought they were Chef Boyardee.

They had one, but I don't think it was called Spaghettios. I think the trademark Rob Spaghettios is trademark Franco-American.

Spaghettio. Campbell's.

Campbell's. It's Campbell's. But I think maybe Campbell's bought Franco-American since the '80s, '90s.

I remember it as Campbell.

Yeah, it was Franco-American in-Shit.

Who's Franco?

1965 introduction. Okay.

When did it get- When did it get dissolved or get absorbed by Campbell's soup? Ring-shaped canned pasta was introduced in 1965 by the Campbell's soup company under the Franco-American brand. Perfect. It was a sub-brand.

It was a sub-brand. Yeah, it was under the umbrella, the Campbell's umbrella.

Oh, my God. Wow. Anyway, so The Batched Martini. So he said, I was like, do you have Hendrix? And he said, oh, no, they're pre-batched. I was like, oh, maybe I'll... And he was like, but they're really good. So he had a lot of investment and pride. I was like, sure, I'll do it. Yeah.

And then- You couldn't get through it.

I only want to drink one sip. That's okay.

Why don't you switch to a wine or something?

I know, but then I was like, I don't want to walk all the way to the bar. It felt too much.

Triz is really doing it. No. Oh, no.

It's like there's a lot of people.

Was there a lot of people? Where was it at?

Spago.

Spago. Did they have canned spaghettios? Is that an Italian?

They did. They had some big batched pastas.

Pre-made like the martinis.

I didn't get any, but Rob got some. It was good. It was good. Yeah, Spago was good.

We went to an event, and I was reminded. We went to a party. We all went to a party on Friday night.

We did. Amazon by Vanity Fair.

Vanity Fair. I keep going to get reminded I'm not a big party person.

I know. It's fun to be invited. It is. Absolutely. It's an honor to be invited. It's flattering. I think it's nice to get cute, wear cute outfits. But then when you get there and it's just so loud and so crowded. Very crowded and packed. And then really, you just end up... Because of the environment, you want to just be with people you know. That's right. So, yeah, eventful week.

Yes. And then the big day. Big day. Your designer came through.

I was so happy. I was so happy with my dress. Shout out, Brandon Naxra.

I saw your post, and they put your name on the inside of it? Yeah.

That's so sweet. You stitched my name It's so sweet. It was really cute, too, because a few people who were there who listened to the pod were chatting.

Where? The party No, at the show.

Golden Globes. Dakota.

Oh, yeah. Dakota.

We were talking and she was like, Is that the Brandon Maxwell? Because she listened. They knew Mila also.

Oh, she was on it?

Yeah. So that was cute. You.

My most flattering moment you witnessed. You almost passed out.

I did.

Lincoln, I mean, she screamed at the top of her lungs when I told her this. This is a big deal. It was hilarious. Jacob Alorty.

Yes.

I turned and this son of a bitch is like 6'5. He's so gorgeous.

He's so gorgeous and so tall. You cannot miss him. He towered over you. Yeah.

I just looked at him and I said, Look at this tall, handsome son of a bitch, not thinking he's going to know me. And then he said, What was it's at both times the most flattering and humbling thing ever. Yeah. He said, Oh, my God, dude, I've been a huge fan of you my whole life. Yeah. I was like, I bet I've been working since you were born or damn near.

How old is he? 1997, he was born.

28. Okay, so he was six when I got on the screen. Yeah.

It's a It's a reminder. Right when memories are starting to form.

I'm his first met. For him, yeah, his whole life, because that's when your memories start imprinting. But I took it very well. Then second highlight was I was seated next to Jenna Ortega.

Oh, that's nice.

I got a whole another two hours to annoy her.

That's funny.

She was with her mom, and it was so cute. Oh, cute. Yeah. I got to know mom really, really well. Nice. I asked her a bazillion questions, and it was really fun.

Fun.

Then we won. Then we won. Some people might think Amy Poehler and not have read that they did call later and said they missed you.

It was a mistake.

It was like Moonlight when Moonlight. Yeah, it's very similar to Moonlight.

It was similar to that. No, we did not win.

And they just didn't want to embarrass Snoop for reading the wrong- Because he read the wrong thing. Yeah, he read the wrong thing.

Actually, we did an interview with him on the carpet, and I said, Well, regardless of what it says, are you just going to say armchair expert? He said, yes.

I know. I said, I have cage.

I know.

I was willing to pay.

You were willing to pay.

Yeah. And then for the record, I told Babers, I was like, right from their announcement, if we had to get beat by someone, I couldn't be happier that it was Babers.

I went up to her and I said, How dare you? How dare you? And she was so cute. She's so cute. I just love her so much.

And then Nikki crushed. What a job.

She did so well. She did so well. I love her. I have such an affinity for her. I went to her party after the Netflix party, and I wanted to show up for her. And she was so cute. I said the podcast package was so funny. Yeah. Her monolog was so good, I thought.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, it was so good. I was very fatigued, though, by the time we got to the show because we had done a lot of press, which A, I haven't done in a while, and B, we were navigating this endless share question, which requires that you're-Nimble.

You have to be really nimble.

What I want to say is, guys, it was funny in a joke. Why the fuck would we post it if we didn't think that? That's what you want to say, and you're not allowed to say that, Monica.

No, you're not allowed to say that, Dax. You didn't say it. I didn't. I was glad. Yeah, no, that question came up a lot.

Every single interview we did.

As we thought it might.

We thought it might. I thought we'll get hit with that once or twice, but every single one we did. Sometimes I'm just like- You can almost feel them waiting to drop it. I'm going to do three nice things. I know.

It's funny because this is where my PR background comes into play.

Actually, you're expert training. Just the anticipated like, Okay, when is it coming?

Yeah, exactly.

That was nice. When's it coming? It's like waiting to get shoved in the back. When you're in high school and you're a dude and you know someone wants to kick your ass, and people tell you, Mike's looking for you. Yeah. And you just walk around waiting to just shoved in the back. Sure. That's just a simmering feeling.

Yeah, I know.

Also, who cares? No boo-hoo. No, no.

No, no. No, but yeah. No, I mean, speaking of high school, the whole thing is extremely high school on crack. From beginning to end, it's immediately popular kids versus not popular kids, who belongs here versus who doesn't belong here.

Seeding arrangement.

Oh, my God. The arrival stuff. Oh, my God. Okay. They changed the whole thing this year. There were stairs, it was in tented. We had slots, and you have to arrive during that time to do the carpet. And then... And even that is a whole thing. It's like, only colonies are allowed to go on the carpet, and your name has to be there. And no publicists are allowed on the carpet. Our slot was really early, but you were going with Chris, and so you were going a little later.

I was really caught in the middle there.

Rob and I went early. It took so long. We're in eyesight. This is just what's all so funny. These are things you don't know when you're watching. I think it's funny. We're at a hotel that is in an eye line to the Beverly Hills.

Where we were staying versus the venue is a nine iron away if you golf.

Yes, exactly.

But you have to go three miles. Yes.

Maybe more. I think more.

You got to go all the way to fucking West LA. Yeah. You make a bootleg on the Wiltshire.

It's insane. There's this whole specific way that the cars have to go. And then what I did really, even though it was frustrating maybe for people because it slowed everything down, I did like, there was extreme security.

Oh, yeah, I love that part.

And I was so happy.

Me too.

So that was great. But then, yeah. So the whole thing takes so long to get there. Then you get there and then you have to stand in line for the carpet. So by the time, it doesn't matter what time you leave, unless you leave at 10: 00 AM. By the time you get there, you're not in your slot. So we finally get to the front of the line, and it's me and our WNDYR publicist and Adam- Kersh. Kersh, our publicist, and Rob and me. And so we're going up the line, and They're ready to drop me off, right? And then they have to go this other way. So we get there and she's like, to our Publicist, she was like, Are you in the right time slot? And she just says, Yeah. And then is going. And then she was like, No, let me see it. And she was like, Well, we're not. And she was like, Well, then you guys need to go over there. And I was like, Wait, wait, wait. Over there? And she was like, Yeah, there's photo opportunities over there. And I was like, But that's not the carpet? I was like, I just spent my entire...

I'm not like, no. She was like, Yeah. And she just kept saying, There's photo opportunities over there. I was like, I'm going to go this way. She was like, Well, how many of you is it? I was like, it's just me. She was like, okay, if it's just you, that's fine. I was like, I mean, then you are in such a weird headspace. Sure.

Because it's like- You're very insecure. You know, they didn't say that to Emma Stone.

Exactly. Well, and as he should, Stella Scarsgarde's in front of me. He walks right in and is fine, and no one's stopping him. Adam and Layton are next to me. No one's... I was like, Yeah, it starts immediately where you're just like, Oh, my God. Then you feel like You want to be like, I'm nominated. I'm not just here. I'm supposed to be here. That whole thing is so interesting. Then that's in your head right before you have to go do these pictures in front of all these people. I just find it very interesting. I feel like there's a story in here, there's a book in here. Then you go down the stairs, and sometimes it's like 85 people are taking pictures of someone. Then for me, it's like one person. Then you're like, oh, it's just like ego hit after ego hit. And at the same time, you're like, and I'm here.

Do you remember in Indiana Jones when they're going through the thing and the darts are coming out the wall, the blow darts?

I know. I know. It is really... But then you're also at one of the biggest parties in the world. You're invited there.

And while people are walking by. Sean Penn is walking by. Benicio Del Toro is walking by.

That's all amazing. It's so cool. I think I said this also when we were talking to someone. It's fun for me. Rob and I were talking about this. We're like, everyone coming down stairs is someone we've had on this show, like so many. And that was cool. It's like, we've created something where all these people have come and chatted with us. Yeah. So it's just wild. We're the seating is, where the seating is. When the seat was on, obviously, we had to deal with a little bit like, where are you going to sit?

Yes. I was supposed to be at the podcast table. Yeah, with me. I'm not sitting with my wife during also this other added layer everyone's scrutinizing us.

Yeah, I know.

So if now I'm not at her table, that looks insane. It looks weird. That shit I would never normally have to even think about.

I know. But we did some moving around. You came for the category. I did it all. Anna was next to me most of the time, so we had tons of fun. So, yeah. But it was really... It was fun. It was a cool experience. You'll never forget that for the rest of your life. I'll never forget it. It was really fun.

Stay Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, If You Dare.

The biggest event is Lincoln requested that we go back to the go car.

I was like, Oh, my God. She's been bit. Okay, so we went. We just got back. We did four races. First race, eight adults. Last time it was mostly her and I and then a couple stragglers. But today there was track full. She's fucking passing people. Amazing. Took a turn, collided into somebody, didn't give a fuck, kept it going, finished fourth, beat her time from last week, brought it down every single session.

Great.

Someone passed her and spun her out, and she was livid for 45 minutes. She went and take her helmet off between sessions, and she wanted to get back. I'm like, Wow, this is incredible. Because when I watched her play soccer, I was like, Girl, attack, glide. You got to get over this fear of colliding. Well, it's here. That's great. Within her second time, she was like, max, going for every pass, fearless.

Oh, so fun. Very fun. Yeah, I just saw her, and she was showing me her.

Her printouts?

Yeah, really cute.

She got into the 26s. She's so excited. She got to get into the 25s now.

What if she gets in the ones?

Then so I was coasting. First two races, of course, I got the fastest lap time. Of course. Of course. That's my move over there. I'm paying attention mostly to Lincoln. Then the third session, and I hadn't been in the same spot of the track. I get out and I see the print out, I was not first. What the fuck? Who's this Patrick dude? It turns out this dude worked there. He also races Formula 4.

Oh, cool.

I was like, Okay, good. I got a goal now, too.

You lost two days in a row?

I guess I did. Wow. Again, Max didn't win this year, and he's the best. So just look at him.

It is funny when you lose, which I don't have all that much experience with.

Yeah, I'm going to have to guide you through this experience.

It's funny when you look around and you're like, look at all these other people who also did not win.

Leonardo DiCaprio didn't win. I know.

It's like, how can you really be upset? You're like, oh, my God, these people didn't win, too. Yes, and did you see one battle after? They're the best people. Yeah. Adam Scott sitting so close to us. I know. He didn't win. But I'm not saying the person who won shouldn't have won. It's just like, Oh, yeah, everyone's fucking amazing here. Yeah. That is when they're like, when people say it's an honor to be nominated, when you're on the outside, you think that's just something you say, but it is real. Yeah. It's very real. Yeah. So was cool?

Very cool.

Oh, no. Should I tell people about something disgusting about me?

Oh, sure. We love discussing stuff. God.

This is probably why we lost. I think Eric put a curse on me when he asked me, or when he said, You're lucky you don't have dandryf because your hair is so black.

Oh, and you've been experiencing a little dander?

I hate it.

Okay.

Okay. It doesn't really match with what I'm going for in this life. Really, it's starting to make me feel insane. But I am using a new product. Rose, shout out Rose, for real. Also, I keep spitting.

Uh-oh.

I also keep spitting because I bit my lip and it's so big and it hurts and now I'm My talking is bad and I'm spitting and I have dander of who will date me?

Everyone. Everyone will date you if you let them.

Anyway, so this new product is like an exfoliant scrub, so it helps. Because one day I was like, What? I was like, What's happening? I couldn't even realize it was coming from my head. That's how bad it was. Oh, wow. Then I hated it.

I have beard dander, so I can relate.

That's just skin.

Yeah, same, same, same old, same old.

I think it's perimenopause.

No, no. Not just dander. Okay, one thing I... We also went to a thing Saturday morning. We went to a little event.

Oh, we did.

Yeah. And I Went solo. First of all, I was supposed to overlap you, and I was writing in the morning, and I happened to get on one of those rare things where I was like, couldn't stop, was in the bubble. Yeah. Then went to take a dump, see a text from you, Where the fuck are you? And I'm I'm like, Oh, my God, that's right now. It was 11. When I read that text, and I'm sitting on the toilet, and I'm like, Oh, my God. So I got down there in 12 minutes.

Yeah, good.

Hung with the people I needed to hang with. And then I was leaving. And this needs to be explained. There are fans of which I have endless time for. Then there are dudes who, when they see you going to a place, they go into a printer in the back of their van, they print up posters, and then they ask you to sign them so they can sell them. I don't care about those dudes, right?

That's fair.

And so I was leaving, and I was going to walk to my motorcycle. It was really close to the front door of this place. And there's these dudes with posters, and I walked by them, and I only get like halfway by them. And then there's all these TMZ people or TMZ-like people there. And immediately one guy starts screaming, Share signs, autographs. You have fucking signed it. I don't even know. Swering at me. Share signs, autographs. Which, first of all, no, I don't think that's true. Secondly, he's screaming that. Then this woman, she's got a camera filming, and she starts going, You're still going to make your 11-year-old daughter freeze her eggs? I'm like, What is going on right now? I was saying it was as if the internet came alive for a second. You only really deal with that in writing from strangers on the internet. Dude, it was like straight internet chatter, the worst comments. Just blasting as I got on my motorcycle. You're like, I dropped my glove. Fuck, I'm on camera. I dropped my-Growth. Yeah, for my motorcycle gloves. I got to bend over and I'm like, I just want to get out of there because I'm being filmed and there's screaming just toxic things at me.

I got to bend over and get my glove. Then I just stopped and I had a big giggle on the motorcycle. That's good. I'm like, Share science. It really got me. I'm like, What is this guy screaming?

What does it even mean?

That's so dumb. He's trying to know if that's bait share, but then an autograph thing happens. So he's tying these two messages together. And this girl is yelling about getting my 11. And I wanted it so... You can't say anything, but I wanted to go, I just want to ask you, do you think they freeze 11-year-old's eggs?

No, she doesn't.

Do you think the question you asked me is a possibility on planet Earth?

She doesn't. That's the whole thing. They know the reality. They're sitting there. They're there to make you Yeah. That is literally the point of that. Yeah.

And they just attack you. I'm going to even rewind. Thank God, by the way. So earlier, I had this other experience where someone, a friend of mine, I look at my DMs, and It appears they've sent me a video. So I open up this video, and it is this comedian lady making a video about Cher saying the thing, and she's talking about how fucking ugly I am and what a stupid name I have, and she's letting it wrap. I mean, this woman hates my guts. And so I immediately am like, Why the fuck did my friend send this to me? And then I realized because the comments that are first under a post are the people you know. So I I see. Oh, my friend actually defended me.

He's showing you he defended you?

No, he wasn't even showing me, but he tagged me. I don't think he realized it was going to go to my DM.

Oh, I see.

So I'm like, But now I saw I know. This fucking lady spending all this time doing this. And then... So I preemptively sent my family a very nice text. All my family that loves me and I know will defend me if they see something. And I said, Hey, gang, There's a lot of stuff being written about me, and I just want you to know it doesn't bother me, and you don't need to defend me, and it'll only give oxygen to the thing. So I'm not saying anyone did anything, just preemptively blah, blah, blah.

Yeah.

So then I had a chat with my mom later that day, and she goes, I didn't really know what that text was about. So I looked you up and it was like, You know what? I got to say I'm fucking proud of you. That's my son. And I'm like, What is she talking about? What is she- I'm literally, I'm like, The share? Yeah. And I go, You're proud of me? And she goes, Yeah, that's such a feminist move. You're going to get your daughter's eggs freeze if they wanted to so that they can be on their own timeline. And I go, Hold on a second. That's a story? Which I didn't even know.

Wait, yeah. That's a huge story. Did you know that? No, I know. I saw it once.

I didn't know that.

But the thing I saw didn't say 11-year-old. It said the real thing. It did. Which is- Which is fine.

Okay, so my mom stumbled upon that stuff. So weirdly, Thank God she told me about that thing, because if I didn't know that, and this stranger just randomly talked about my daughter. The crazier thing I think I dodged a real ball is I was going to take Delta to that party. I know. But I left so late. I knew I was going to ride my motorcycle so fast. I didn't want her on back, so I didn't take her. She was sad about it, and I was sad. But fucking, thank God, if I was walking out with her and they were doing that shit to her. Do you think they would? I do. They're fucking Shameless. Yeah.

Oh, my God.

I can't predict what I would do. You can't talk in front of my 11-year-old.

I know, but I know.

I'm so lucky. I'm so lucky that- We dodged. It was like, now, universe. Thank God I was late so that I didn't take Delta because that one would have been saying that shit in front of Delta. I don't know if I could have kept my cool. Then there would have been another fucking in line that I have my daughters on my motorcycle. Then that would have been the next thing. He rides with his children on his motorcycle.

Yeah, there's an endless... You got it.

But I want to say the thing that I said to my family, and then I want everyone to know that it doesn't bother me because it is a gift of things having worked out for me. The more it works out for you, the more that's going to happen. And I just remind myself, this is just a symbol of you got fucking lucky. Things have worked out for you. Look, in the past, I haven't had a great healthy attitude about this stuff, but I currently have a lot of peace with it, which I'm grateful for.

Yeah. Okay, we're going to do some... This is for Chris Stapleton. Great. So exciting. Huge get.

Now would be a great time to say that I cannot stop listening.

He's the best.

To Steel Driver, his first band, Heaven Sent. What a fucking song.

He's so good. What a song. He's just so good. Really lucky that we got to interview him. We've been trying for a while. So it was very exciting. Not very many facts. Just a few. What is the population of Staffordsville, Kentucky? Small. 2,625 people.

Okay, so Milford size where I grew up.

Really small.

Small stuff.

Okay. What is the industrial cable side of the Pirelli Company, the one his dad worked for? In 2005, Pirelli sold its cable division to Goldman Sachs, changing the new group's name to Prismian. Prismian?

Don't recognize it.

P-r-y-s-m-i-a-n.

Wouldn't even I'm trying to say it out loud.

That's tough. I'm going to go with Prismian. Yeah.

I don't know if that was the right name to go with.

Yeah, maybe it was someone's last name.

Maybe that's a well-known term within cabling.

Oh, maybe. Speaking of today, which you posted, but today, Connections was exciting.

Why not? Why not? We love you.

I mean, I don't know. I don't know. It is a phrase. What do you mean you don't know? It's a phrase, so it It could also be just cheeky as a phrase. It might not be about us. Monica. We're making some assumptions.

Oh, I feel very... I don't even feel cocky about saying that.

I don't know. I wish she would tell us.

Maybe the next clue will be, You are right. Monica is wrong. Dax is right. Trying to put Dax in one of these, you can't.

There's no-They can make it about chairs.

It couldn't group anything. Oh, that's right. Or the German Stock Exchange, maybe. Or the Ds are replaced with Xs in these four words.

It could be for fax. Types of machines, but the first letters change. I don't know if it was real or not. I don't know if it was for us or not for us, but regardless, we took it as a big win.

I'm taking it as the consolation prize for sure.

Yeah, it was exciting. Oh, how old was Chris when he wrote the song, Higher? He wrote it 23 years ago, 20 years before the album came out in 2023. He's currently 47, so he would have written it at 24.

24. Great age. I was really hit my stride as a party animal at 24.

At 24.

Yeah, I was developing. I had like, I knew what boos as I liked, the drugs I was partaking. Really, it was working.

You knew your cocktail like, I know mine. Do you remember it?

Yes, your Hendrix Martini, you were bruised.

Lemon twizz.

Lemon twizz.

Yeah, because I don't like all of them. Okay.

I love them.

I want to like them.

Yeah, they look good, don't they?

Yeah, they're on my top foods that I wish I liked, but I don't.

Do you try?

I do. I keep trying.

You do. Okay, great. Because I've had a lot of things flip. Yeah. Cotace cheese.

Yeah.

Always look so good. I know. I would take a bite. It's terrible. I know. Then I take a bite one day. I'm like, Fuck, this is good. I know. I agree. Coffee. You're like, Egh. I know. Shit's bitter. Then one day you're like, This stuff's delicious.

I know. You're right. But I keep trying. Every now and then, I'll just eat it.

Now, I'll be specific. I like the purple ones, the purple and dark ones. I'm not wild about the green ones. Have you fucked with the purple ones?

Yeah, they I get put on stuff.

Do you know what my gateway was? I remember the day in place. Okay, tell me. We were a turnt. Okay. I hate olives. I hate olives. I hate olives. I was with my mother doing legwork at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona, or Scottsdale. And we went out to eat with client for lunch, and they put an olive tomanade on the table. And I sampled that olive tompanade, and I was like, Hold up a second. What is this goulash, this slurry? And I fell in love with tompanade, which then led to me being able to eat them in the raw. I know I'm probably not saying it right.

No, you are, I think. Okay.

So try an olive tompanade.

Okay.

That might get you. That's what got me.

Do you like black olives?

I like the purple ones. That's what's generally in a topanon.

But what about if you order a pizza and it has olives? It's normally black.

Yeah, I would never order pizza with olives.

Okay.

I would just eat the purple ones raw or eat a topanod. I only have a gallon of topanon. My old favorite restaurant, RIP Tropicacalia.

Oh, Tropicacalia.

Tropicacalia, they made a topanod.

I wonder if I ever had that topanod. I'm going to go find myself a topanod tonight. You should. I'll report back.

They vary a lot in their quality, I'll say.

It doesn't really make sense because I love salt.

Yeah, and it's baked in... Not baked, but it's soaked and marinated in olive oil, which I love.

I love olive oil, which also makes no sense. I love olive oil. I like capers, which are basically olives. I like capers. But why? I don't know.

All right. Well, I hope this will be your gateway. Okay.

2026.

You're the top of the odd.

Okay. Love. Love you.