Transcript of #2212 - Jelly Roll

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I'm back with my bubba.

My man. I haven't seen you since master square garden. That was crazy.

What a great night, dude.

What an experience, man.

Dude, it was. So I was thinking about it pulling up here is that I think y'all just got out of Vulcan, and the club had just opened. And I came that night to see Ron White, and I went back that Monday to see kill Tony. And I could feel the kill Tony thing happening over Covid at Vulcan, so I had to go see it in person, you know, and I could remember sitting in there and you know how, like, you can feel an energy shift? Yeah, I felt an energy shift in life in that room that night. I was like, this is fixing to explode. Like, everything associated with this club, everything associated with Tony, everything associated with Joe is fixing to fix fucking rocket ship. And it felt like. Almost like I'm getting goosebumps, Joe. I'm not even. Bullshit.

I'm getting goosebumps.

I'm getting goosebumps. It's almost like. I swear, dude, it was like feeling the grunge movement in the nineties. Like, when you first heard a little something, you were like, this is different.

Yeah.

And you were like, this could be something. And then it just turned out to be the explosion. It's like I felt that happening. So to see Tony at fucking Madison Square Garden and then to see how y'all showed up for Tony at Madison Square Garden, every fucking comedian on earth came to see that dude, to fucking.

Two nights kiss him on his fucking cheek.

You know what I'm saying?

I had to be there. I had to be there. I was there in the beginning. I was there when there was, like, 18 comedians in the crowd.

Is that not crazy?

It was crazy. They were doing in the belly room of the comedy store. It was just like an afterthought. They couldn't do any of the other rooms. Cause they didn't have an audience, and they would. And Tony just had this weird idea that he just, like, look a little pit bull. Just stuck with it. 1 minute of comedy. And he, like, honed it over time and figured out. And then he became the best host in all of entertainment. There's no one better at hosting a comedy show than him. The way he does that show. The speed of his comebacks, the speed of his, like, the roast lines.

I tell Tony all the time. I say, tony, I love you. And that panel is the coolest thing I've ever seen. But you are the show, brother. We would all tune in if you were sitting up there by yourself. Like, you are just so sharp. I relate to it, too, Joe. I compare art forms. It's just something I like to do. I know some people don't, but watching Tony, I feel a kinship to Tony and Andrew Schultz in a certain way because I feel like we all kind of met each other right before it happened for all of us.

Right?

Like, I remember me and Schultz doing the opener up song, the five four. You know, he was doing two nights at Zany's. Two shows. One show, you know, one show a night. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And I was doing a thousand seat club in the south, you know what I mean? And Tony was still kill Tony. And. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

And we're all fucking old. Like, the fact that it happened for all of us in our late thirties, true. Is even cooler. So it's this double kinship. Like, when I was nominated for new artist of the year at almost 40, that's the first time that had ever happened in CMA history and country music. Yeah, but, like, this year, most of those kids are 27 and under. Here I was, a 40 year old fucking man up there.

You're a beautiful example that there's no rules. Yes, there's no rules. It's all bullshit. Just be yourself. Just be yourself. Do your best. Find whatever it is inside you that you can express. There's no rules. There's no rules for age. Like, Ron White used to worry about that all the time. I think I'm too old. What are you? You're Ron motherfucking white. You're a legend, period. But it's like that humility that he has, even though he's got great confidence in his ability. Like, Ron is a very humble guy, as successful as he is. But that humility that he is is also that constantly has him writing, it, constantly has him working. He's 40 years in the game. He never stops. And he's better now than he's ever been before now that he's sober. Like, he's a monster. Monster on stage.

Imagine hitting. So, to me, Ron White is on Mount Rushmore of comedy. For me, personally, I know it's the me, too. Some people are going to, you know, whatever. But for me, because I judge comedy as a fan of, like, I look at skits, like, I mean, I look at specials. Like, what song stood out to me the most in the whole special. Like, your special was your album. How many songs do you have that I tell my friends about? Like, it's my song, right, right. You know what I mean? And like, to me, Ron White has done more of that than I have more Ron white bits memorized than any other comedian just by like, default of how good he is at weaving these little quick two minute stories of just complete white trashery and drunkery, which is just my fucking specialty. It's like, girl, I feel like he grew up on my street, you know what I'm saying? So my mama likes Ron White, you know what I mean?

He was the first guy here, you know, he was the first guy that came. He moved here before the pandemic. That's great, cuz he was always with us at the store. And then one day I called him up, where the fuck you been, man? He was. I moved to Austin.

Fuck Texas.

He just, he said he just loved it. He's like, there's no traffic, everyone's nice. And I started thinking about it. Then he planted like the first seeds in like 2018. I was like, could I live in Austin? Fuck, I don't know. Because my instinct has always been to move to the mountains. Like I want to. I want to live somewhere where there's no people. Like, did you ever have, did you.

Have mountains in mind when you like, romanticized it? Did you ever think of what mountains you would move to if you did it?

I really liked the mountains above Boulder. I really. I lived there for a little while in 2009. But when I think about Montana, sometimes I think about just someplace more peaceful. Wyoming, somewhere just a little more peaceful. Cold as fuck in the winter, but just like more real. And that was my thought when I was living in LA. But it was like a necessity to get the fuck out of there when the COVID stuff was going on. Like, they're not gonna let this go. They're gonna keep us in control for once. They have control of you. Like they had during the pandemic. Wear a mask. Gotta get a vaccine. Can't go here, can't go there. No businesses. Everything shut down. All the restaurants go under. All the comedy clubs go under. When they were doing that, I was like, they're not gonna let this go. I gotta get the fuck out of here. And when we came to Texas, it was wide open. Like, you know, some places made you wear a mask, but it was a joke. It was like, it was a goof. It was weird. It was like a completely different universe we could go to.

My kids were young, man. They were ten and twelve and, like, they wanted to go to restaurants. Like, we can go to a restaurant here and sit indoors. Like, for. Everyone was terrified in LA and they just weren't here. And the same result, like, the same, the same thing happened to everybody. But over here, it was a way more peaceful experience. And Ron, when we were out here, we started doing shows at the Vulcan. And one night, the first time Ron had been on stage in like eight months, he just grabbed me by my shoulders. He's like, whatever the fuck we have to do, we're gonna keep doing this. He's like, you gotta open up a club. And I'm like, all right, that's it. We're opening up a club. And the process began.

God damn.

All because of Ron. Ron led me to think about moving here. Ron was already out here, so I knew that if I did move to Austin, at least Ron's here, you know? And then Tony moved here, and then Brian Simpson moved here. And then the fucking. Just the train kept a rolling all night long.

It was, I think it was by default, it was kind of a universe thing where there was a little bit of stale water that needed to be stirred.

Yeah.

And when you came, that stale water stirred and it awakened everybody. Like, hold on. There's choices outside of the same routine that we've been. Cause, you know, I mean, I'm sure y'all's life was store, store, store. Weekends out, store, store, store.

It was improv, too. I did that in the ice house. There was a few clubs we did. Did like on a regular, you know, because the more places to work out, the better, you know. And when we were, there were so many of us too, you know, we'd have shows. It's like Bill Burzon, me, Tom Segura, Burt Kreischer. They're crazy shows. Crazy shows. Because everybody was in LA. It was a beautiful thing up until they shut everything down.

That beautiful here. Now, though, I know. That's what I'm saying. The water is completely. I mean, it is.

And know the best thing is, too, there's an added element that we bring new people in every weekend. So every weekend there's these big national headliners. So they come in on Tuesday, Wednesday, we're fucking around all week. We're just having a great time.

That's how I describe your club. I was like, it's the gym for the greatest comedians in the world Tuesday through Thursday. And then the other greatest comedians in the world come and rent it from Friday to Sunday. I was like, it's crazy, dude. It's like no matter what day, you.

Have killed Tony, that's the anchor. Kill Tony is the anchor of comedy in the known universe. That's a grandiose statement, I know, but what kill Tony shows you is like every comic wants a reaction. And some comics, unfortunately, if you're in specific areas, like very liberal areas, like Silver Lake, has a problem with this. Those kind of places where everyone's, like super woke and they want to let everyone else know that they're super woke. It's like a kind of thing you have to do. So you get ideologically captured and you, you make material. That's bullshit. You get claptor. What kill Tony makes you do is you have one fucking minute. You have 1 minute, and there's obviously no rules. By the time you get on stage, you've seen cam go crazy. You've seen Hans Kim say some ridiculous shit. Maybe you've seen William Montgomery or Brian Holtz, but you've seen maniacs on stage killing. And so you got 1 minute. Just crack. It's time to crack. So it sets a tone for comedy, that comedy is just entertaining. No matter how you put it out, no matter what it is, what your style is, what you like to talk about, whether you're Nate Bargotsi or whether you're Shane Gillis, there's just a different way to do it.

Everybody's got their own way to do it, but it's just, go try to find your way. Don't try the tricks. Don't try to sneak in some fucking ideological bullshit just cause you think people are gonna agree with you and like you more and clap and cheat and you're gonna say something profound. Shut up. You got 1 minute. So that sets a tone for all the people coming up.

Real.

It's the mo, it's one of the most important things that's ever happened.

Nobody's trying to impose their beliefs on you real quick. They're just trying to make. They got 60 seconds to get a fucking laugh.

And.

And the kill Tony crowd will boo you if you don't. You've got about 30 seconds with them in an arena. In an arena. Real dangerous grounds, dude.

Bro, they were, especially New Yorkers, those.

First show in New York.

They were rough. They go hard.

You know, when I knew the arena thing was gonna be huge for Tony, I flew down here for the first one he did. Cause we were drunk at the bar that night, and he was like, I'm gonna play an arena. I was like, I'm gonna come sing the national anthem. And it was a joke, because I don't sing the national anthem. I have a rule. I don't sing the national anthem. But I told him I was gonna do it, so I came down and we're watching the first comedian this night at the heb center, right? The first bucket pull comes up, and you could tell this bitch did not have any idea she was gonna get called or anything to say. This is the first. You talking about a gift from God for Tony, right? She's not up there 18 seconds, Joe, before they realize that she's just, you know, falafeling. The boo birds came. They didn't start slowly and grow like they normally do. It was like 13 or 12,000 people made the decision at once. Boo.

What a horrible feeling. What a horrible feeling.

And I was like, oh, yeah, this is gonna explode in arenas. I was like, kill Tony's gonna fucking arenas.

It's. It's a bet. It's the best show for that kind of an audience.

We watch it every Monday on the bus. Yeah, full disclosure. Like, as a bus. Imagine, like, a bunch of music dudes every Monday that were, like, religiously. It's something we have together. You know what I mean? It's something that the whole band can agree on.

The other thing about kill Tony was, in the beginning, Tony wasn't famous. No one was famous. And they were just going hard, and then as everyone got famous, they kept going hard, whereas it's very hard to just jump in and do something that wild now. And there was nothing like it during COVID There's nothing like it. You had this live show every week in front of a live audience, and everybody else is locked down where you have to wear your fucking mask, where you're walking your dog. You know, like, what is going on?

No, you're having to bring it.

It was also just, like, this rejection of norm, you know, rejection of whatever is going. Whatever people think the comedy industry is. Cause people think the comedy industry is like some group of people with power that control all the. And give people specials that don't deserve it. There's all this, like, weird I. Weird thoughts about the comedy business, but when the comedy business is only comedians, it's a completely different experience, and that's what Kil Tony is. There's no business element behind it. There's no networks. There's no producers. There's no. There's no person. No executive worrying about their fucking mortgage. You can't say that, Tony. There's none of that. So it's just wild.

No, it's. It's complete chaos all the time. It's the greatest show on the Internet, period. That's the truth.

Fucking rules. And it's like I said, but you're.

Talking about people that do more when they get there. And that men. You were talking off record, right? I mean, off record, off microphone. We were walking in here about, you hang around nine long enough, you'll be the 10th.

Yeah.

And God bless me, that in the last few years, in light of my success, I've been had really cool friends like Tony and I have become really good friends. You and I become really good friends. And I've been able to watch, like, a student of the game. Guys like y'all, Bert, Tom and go, man, these dudes are turning the heat up as it matters. Like, the content's flowing. Like it's only getting bigger. Last year, Joe, my most successful year of my career, I wrote more songs than I've ever wrote in a single year as a free man.

That's amazing.

Jail's a different concept. Cause, fuck. What? I wrote a song a day. You know what I mean? But I wrote a hundred and I turned in 170 songs to my publisher last year.

Oh, shit.

I just couldn't quit writing them. I was on the bus. I just could not. I could not. At every corner, I was getting done with show, you know, I do five shows a week. It's just how we tore. I was getting straight on the bus and just grabbing a guitar and just pouring ideas. I'm putting out 27 songs when this podcast is out. My album beautifully broken is out right now. I had 22 on the album and I had five or six features that I was going to do for deluxe next week. And my wife teased one of the songs that's kind of doing good. So I think I'm just going to drop them all tomorrow. Today, technically, anyway.

Dude, you're so at home on stage, it's crazy. You know, when you did New York, New York at Madison Square Garden, I asked her, I'm like, how often do you just do this? Just get up there and sing? How often are you doing this? It's a crazy thing because it's like just you. You just, are you up there? You know, 15,000 people, 50,000 people. It's just jelly roll. It's. That's when a guy's like, you know, you're. You're just so in the zone and so on top of your game. It's just beautiful to watch someone that's in the zone. Because you recognize that that feeling is a great feeling when you just, like, totally in tune with what you're doing. I love when I see a comic.

That'S in there and, you know, it's a flow.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Last time Dave Vattel was here, it was right before he filmed his special. My God, it was magic.

He's so different.

Oh, my God, he's so good right now. If you get a chance to see Dave Vattel live, if you're a comedy fan, you have to see him. He's. And now I'm sure he's got a whole bunch of new stuff because the specials out, but God damn, he's in this fucking flow. He's a like a. Like a Zen master up there.

It's scary how comfortable he is. I got so I've never been to the cellar. It's been a dream of mine. I had a night in New York. I'd finished tv, so I went to the cellar that night, and I got Dave Attell's number on Burt's tour. I went on Burt's fully loaded tour this year for fun. Did I tell you the story?

I think so.

Just like I think I told you, but just like, to fuck off, I called Bert and was like, yo, can I just park my bus and just come fuck off for, like, five or six shows? And he was like, what? I was like, yeah. He was like, will you sing? I was like, fuck, yeah, whatever. I'll come sing a song or two. So I just go up with a guitar every night between comedians.

That's amazing.

But me and Dave would hang out every night. Me, Dave, Big J, Okerson, Sodereze, Morel, and we would all just work there. I'm just like, having the cool. I'm just like. I'm rarely quiet as I am back there because I'm just listening because these dudes are telling the greatest storytellers ever. Oh, yeah, telling old stories.

Great guys, too. So he's the best.

Soder's the dude, son.

So I'm like, sam's fucking amazing. They're just such good guys, too.

And such good reel. Just different level comedians, too.

They're great comedians, but they're just great people, too. They're fun to hang with. There's a great crop. There's a great crop of people coming up right now. Now, you know, Normand and Shane and all these guys coming up right now are so good. Tom.

It's a different level. David till gives me his number. He's like, call me if you're ever in New York. I know. I see he has a flip phone, right? Dave pulls a little flip phone out. So I'm in New York, and I just, like, randomly, and I say, dave, when I call you, I'm going to be in New York City trying to find you, okay? He said, he said, no problem. I'll be at the cellar. It's what he tells me, right? I call this dude. Me and Ian finance are standing, sitting at the bar, and I say, I'm gonna call Dave and see what time he's coming. I call, third ring. Dave answers and go, you here? I go, I am. He goes, you need help getting in? I was like, I'm in. He said, see you in a few flips the phone down. It was the most Dave Adele thing ever.

He's one of the only guys I know that stopped partying, got completely sober, and got way better, way better. A lot of guys, there's, like, this thing that they have when they're, you know, doing drugs, especially where they're just wild. And sometimes that wildness is like a magical energy on stage. Like, I couldn't imagine a sober Kinison. That would have been really weird. Like, Kinison's whole thing was like, I'm here to fucking party. Like, he was partying, dude, hard. And that's why we didn't get much out of him. We only got, like, really a couple of good albums out of Kinison. Cause he's just going too hard.

His family came to my show in El Paso. Polly sent em, and they brought me Sam Kinison's original gospel disks.

Oh, wow.

They gave me, like five of them, Joe. It's like one of my most prized possessions now.

How is it? How's the music?

Oh, it's crazy. Well, it's a lot of preaching on there, too.

Is it preaching and singing?

Yeah, it was a lot of preaching on the first one. I didn't get to the second one yet. I hadn't had a disk player. They brought all five of them. I was so scared to fuck them up, I immediately put them in a pelican crate and sent them home.

Oh, wow.

I was like, this is crazy. You know what I mean? I mean, the whole Kenison family is like ten of them in there sharing all these cool stories because I wanted them. Polly said, the Kinison family wants to come see your show. I said, I want them to see my show because I have so much of my show is derivative from Sam Kinison. You know what I mean? Like, there's so much. I'm a southern gospel man. Anyways, I went to a southern church, so I just understood Kinison's inflections and that kind of thing. It just spoke to me right from where I'm from. So it's like I have always tried to. I tell people I'm somewhere between Billy Graham and Sam Kenison, you know what I mean? As far as, like, how you know when you got to come see. I'll be. I do the moody center in November.

Okay.

It's a middle of the week, too. You should be able to make. It'll be fun. I'm trying to talk Karen to put in a closed on Mitzi's door sign that says close gone to the jelly roll show. Speaking of Mitzi's, can I tell you something? I want to. I've been waiting to talk to you about this in person. I was so inspired by the time I spent with you down here and more importantly, the time I spent at your club, even without you. Just. They treat me. I don't know if you hear the stories, but I've become a fixture of furniture there when I'm in town. And I am opening. I'm announcing this now, right here, that I am opening my bar on Broadway in Nashville, Tennessee, which is a real big deal. You've been to Broadway? It's all after country music stars. I'm the first Nashville native to get a bar. So, like, the first kid from the city to get a bar. But I was so inspired by the way the mothership has Mitzi's and. And it's like an honor to Mitzi's and what y'all do that I have put. My bar is gonna be called jelly Rolls.

Goodnight, Nashville. But I have a back bar called buddy's, named after my late father. And it was completely inspired from what you have done at Mitzi's.

Oh, that's great.

All the way down to the. We're gonna set his chair there for him. You know what I mean? Like, it's just so inspiring. And it's gonna be just like, y'all, our rule is it's open to the public when it's open to the public.

Mmm.

And when it's not, it's not.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Yeah. Like Minty's.

Yeah. It's like. Because that place has created such a safe place for me to party.

Yeah.

This is what me and post Malone talk about when we're drunk by ourselves. We're like, we need to go back to jost and let's just go hang. It's like the safest bar in the world. You know what? I'm just saying? It's like I can say anything here. I know. I'm okay.

Everybody's cool. The whole staff's cool. The staff's mostly comedians, you know.

But my question was, can I send my buddy's bartender to hang out with Carrie for a week and shadow her?

100% shadow. Okay.

Carrie said she's into it. She just said, ask.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Whatever you need. Yeah, yeah, that's a great idea.

I think I'm gonna send her down in November around my show here. I'm gonna bring her with me so she can meet Carrie that night. Cause Carrie runs the ultimate celebrity bar to me.

Yeah.

Like, she deals with complete chaos down there with them comedians. I've watched it. It is wild.

Well, Carrie learned how to do it at the store. That's why I hired her. She was one of the first hires. Cause I told her, I go, you know, she was, like, one of the first people I contacted. I'm like, I'm gonna open up a club.

She's awesome, dude.

I had to get her out here because she was, like, the mother of the back bar.

That's how I feel.

So the back bar at the store, it was completely removed. There's no general public at all. It's a very small. You've ever been in the back bar of the store?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So Carrie ran that place, so she kept everybody in line. Punky was there, too, before punky was on SNL. It's hilarious. She used to run that back bar, too, and we used to all hang out there, like, anybody, you know, you could be safe there. Anyway, all these celebrities, people from out of town, they'd all just find their way to that weird little private bar. So I kind of knew. And originally, Mitzi's was not going to be open to the public at all. It was just going to be a private bar. But then along the way, we said, you know what? It doesn't hurt to, like, have it open to the general public, like, up until a certain time, and then from that time out, have it everybody after the shows are over, because that's when everybody really wants to hang. And that was, like, the best blending of both worlds, you know? But it was that old bar in Hollywood was, it had her bar from her home that they had moved and put there. So the actual bar that you put drinks on was from her home.

Yeah.

So it's like that. There was, like a piece of her there with us all the time. So when we decided to do this place, I'm like, we got a bar just for Mitzi. Just. It's the same kind of. Same kind of vibe.

Yeah.

You know?

No, I mean, it touched my soul in such a way that I wanted to do it for my father.

That's awesome.

You know what I mean? So I just want you to know that the Mitzi legacy has went even further and that what y'all, all of creative there is spreading on to. Emmy almost got me emotional, talking about a woman I never even met. I just know she did so much for you.

She did so much for everybody. She's the most important person in the history of comedy. That's not a comedian.

Polly's shared some really cool stories with me about her, and it's just, man, it's just unreal. I got to spend a little time with Polly because I went to that back bar there. The cool thing is, because of y'all, I've now found y'all's community embraces me everywhere now. So I'm safe if I'm in a city now. If I'm in LA, I'm like, where's the comedy club? I bet they got a back bar. Call Adam Ray. You know what I'm saying? Adam Ray's like, hey, I'm at the back bar at the store. Come on. I'm like, yes. On the way.

Yeah. It's a fun group of people. Contrary to popular belief, popular belief is a. Comedians are all, like, miserable.

No, dude, it's actually the funniest, the greatest storytellers ever. I could listen to guys like Burt talk all night. I could listen to Joey Diaz talk all night.

I've known Joey for 30 years. He still tells me news stories.

Yeah, it's crazy. No, dude, it's crazy, man.

Because Joey.

It's crazy, dude. Because what? Joey could go to the store today and have a story.

Oh, yeah.

You know what I mean? And just be fucking one of the. One of the best stories ever. I think all in the storytelling business, right? That's what I do too. Sure, I'm telling stories. I'm not doing it in a comedic way, but I'm. I'm still telling a story. You know what I mean? Like, it's all that kind of story. I would. I am attracted to storytellers, you know?

I think we all are. I mean, that's why you love a good movie. That's why you love a good book.

Especially one that's somebody that can tell a story that can capture you in a certain way.

I think it was probably the oldest form of entertainment, right? Once people, when they first started learning language about the oldest form of entertainment, was probably recreating a thing they saw, right? Yeah, had to be, right?

Yeah, for sure. But think about the old, let's sit around the campfire, read stories. I mean, that. I'm sure they were telling tales. Tall tales is what they used to call them. Think about how long we've been hearing these kind of stories of people just telling stories.

Also, back then, that was the only time in your day that you got to relax when you're sitting around the campfire. That was the only time. It was dark out, there was nothing to do. You found all the food you're going to find, and you're going to get up in the morning and go right back at it all day long again, and then eventually find your way back to the campfire. So the campfire was like the time where people would sit around and entertain each other in prehistory.

Yeah, because you're thinking about it, like, from a hunting perspective, too. They had to go out all day and find the food.

Yeah, exactly.

You could only do that when the sun was out.

You could only do it when the sun was out. And the night time. It's fucking dangerous because there's predators out there. So fire is the best thing to keep off the predators. You know, fire. And everybody gathers around the fire because the predators don't want to come to the fire. Fuck, man. And that's where people learn how to tell stories. That's why we're so attracted to it.

They were doing fucking drugs back then, too. I'm sure they were smoking pot and doing all kind of.

They were doing all.

Somebody had already figured out that cow shit, mushrooms could make you feel great.

Yeah, 100%. 100%. They tried everything. They were starving. They tried a little bit of eating everything, and they figured out what you can eat and what kills you. Imagine going through mushrooms, trying to figure out which ones kill you and which ones get you to see God.

Yeah, they had to figure that out. Trial and error, how many times they had to go through it and go back and go, listen, y'all, I've done this a few times, and I'm pretty confident that there is this thing that grows in a pile of shit. It makes me feel fucking like God. You know what I'm saying? It's crazy, dude. Somebody had to be that guy.

Did you ever hear about John Marco Allegro? In the book the Sacred Mushroom and the scrolls. It's sacred mushroom. No, it was a sacred mushroom in the christian myth. And what was there's two different sacred mushroom and the Dead Sea scrolls I think is one of them. What are the titles of his book? Sacred Mushroom and the cross? And then there is another one. There's another one that he released after the catholic church allegedly bought out all the copies of the first one to get rid of it.

Wow.

Something in the christian, mythical, the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the christian myth.

I read the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So this guy thinks that all of religion is stories about mushrooms. He thinks that the entire christian religion was about psychedelic mushrooms and fertility rituals. He thinks that what they were doing was they would have these stories especially when they were conquered by the Romans, they'd have these stories so they would hide the truth in stories and in you know allegories and all these different tales. But he thinks that the entire christian religion was based on the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms.

I can tell you this on brand, I mean I'm a man of faith but on brand with that is Jesus told stories and he taught in stories. Jesus never gave a direction. He always was just like well and then he'd tell a story and you would have to figure out, you know what I mean? It was like okay, this story would show the, it was always in story form too.

Maybe they knew that was the best way to ensure that people would tell it the same way every time. You know because if you have a store in the store and Noah has an ark and he brings the animals in the ark and God tells him he's going to do this and he's going to do that and he does it and then you know if you have a story then that information keeps getting told essentially the same way over and over and over again. Like we can read the epic of Gilgamesh today. That's a 6000 year old story. Something like that. 5000, we can read that today. That's nuts. Right? That's crazy because it's a story. But if it was just people talking about what you should do or what happened and you know like when it's history man we can't trust history from the sixties. History from the sixties. We're finding out new shit every day about the Kennedy assassination. That was fucking 63 man. 63. That's 51 fucking years ago. That's insane. And we're still trying to figure out the fuck happened. And this is like with modern, like they had television, they had printing press, they had all these different things.

They had accountability they had elected officials did democracy. Still can't figure out what the fuck happened. And that's 63. So imagine trying to figure out what the fuck happened 5000 years ago. You know, it's like, who knows? Who's telling the truth? Who knows? You've got to like sort through the rubble and figure out what the fucking. The facts show. But if you have a story, even if it's like there's something hidden in that story, right? And he thinks that that's what the. The apple was in the Garden of Eden.

That's deep. That's. Yeah, all that. All that was in story. Think about stories too, is they said, I've never been to the pyramids, but they said that all that stuff on the inside of it is just a story. Right? It's all telling a story to hieroglyphics, like telling stories. Or when they have the guys chasing these things with the spears, they're like trying to show a story. It's all trying to tell a story.

A lot of mushrooms too. Yeah, there's a lot of images then with mushrooms I might.

Mushrooms a day. It's my album.

Really.

I'm thinking about it. I don't know if I want to do.

God, they should be legal.

I know, right?

They should be legal and regulated and people should figure out what the fuck they do.

Yeah.

Should do a lot of research, figure out what this is. This might be the thing that gets us out of there. Just some micro dosing nation and connects together.

I know every time I've went deep, it was life changing for me. Like, I'll do a lot of mushrooms every now and then, just like, you know, let's get. But anytime I was like, let's go. It was a life changing experience.

It's funny that people want to reject that as not being. That's what's really important is to keep people from like, losing their mind and losing their ambition and becoming like the hippies were in the 1960s following Timothy Leary. That's what everybody's worried about. Everybody's worried about like, this collapse of society. Because people, they give up on capitalism. They tune in and drop out. You know, that whole thing. I don't think that's real. I don't think we should be worried about that. I think those people are always gonna want to drop out. The people that want to fuck off are always gonna want to fuck off. And if you give them an excuse, yeah, they're gonna do it. But that's just a style of person that's not gonna affect most people, most people would benefit, especially if they're not crazy. They don't have, like, mental health problems. You'll probably get something out of it.

Yeah. I mean, it's helped me in some of my most depressed moments. If I'm really in a dark, dark spot and can't get out of it, my wife will encourage me to go trip. She'll be like, why don't you go? We, like, we got this. It's called the Buffalo river back in Tennessee. It's outside of a little town called Hornwell, Tennessee. Look, old country river, man. I mean, look, country Creek River. I mean, it's a river, but it's kind of shallow. You can see the bottom of it. And we'll go. It's called floating the buffalo. We'll go out there and just float to buffalo. And every now, about twice a year, me and the buddies will go out there, and we'll just take six or seven. Damn. And just float the buffalo.

Damn.

So if I haven't got to do it in a year because of the schedule, my wife will feel that on me and be like, you might need to go to the buffalo. You know what I'm saying? She's like, she'll say it really cool. She'll be like, when's the last time you floated the buffalo? And I'll be like, man, it's been a year, hadn't it? She'll be like, I think you and scary Larry's one of my best friends, and he's. I've known we met each other in juvenile hall. Just wild character. She goes, you and scary should go float to buffalo. She'll just, like, encourage me. Like, she knows I'm going to come back a way better husband, way better father.

You know what the wildest theory I've ever heard about psilocybin is? Is that it came from outer space, that it's an organism from another planet. And the reason for this is that they know that spores can survive in the vacuum of space. And there's a thing called panspermia. And panspermia is the idea that, like, an asteroid slams into a planet, and it takes amino acids and biological organisms that can survive in space and a bunch of different elements from that planet, and then introduces those new elements to another planet by way of an asteroid. And that's a real thing that we know for sure happens, right? And they know that that's how we get iridium. There's a lot of iridium on Earth, like, in places where there's been an impact because it's really rare on earth, but really common in space. So we know that some shit gets to us. And apparently I'm too stupid to understand this, but the way botanists describe it and see if you can find any information on this, there's something very unusual about the compound psilocybin and. Psilocybin mushrooms. Psilocybin cubensis. Mushrooms. They're very weird, and they're not really connected to a lot of the other fungus that's here in some strange way.

Like, the way they work is also very tied into human neurochemistry, really close to, like, dimethyltryptamine, which is a part of human neurochemistry. And so the craziest theory is that it's come from space. Living spores have been found and collected in every level of Earth's atmosphere. Mushroom spores are electron dense and can survive in the vacuum of space. Additionally, their outer layer is actually metallic and of a purple hue, which naturally allows the spore to deflect ultraviolet light. And as if all this wasn't unique enough, the outer shell of the spore is the hardest organic compound to exist in nature. So this is one of the weirder theories. So this is. Was this Terrence McKenna's theory? Are mushrooms from outer space? Is he bad? It brings him up. I don't know if it's officially his theory, but the late ethnobotanist Terence McKenna suggests that mushrooms are responsible for human intelligence. Yeah, he had a theory. It's called the stoned ape theory.

Yeah, I heard about that. On your theory.

Hypothesized that mushroom sports possess all the necessary requirements to travel on the. On space currents. Furthermore, they could have settled in the brain matter of primitive hominoids and following the lines of modern day hallucinogenic mushrooms, directly contributed to our modern day intelligence and self awareness.

It's fucking wild.

Yeah, his theories. That's why, I mean, if you could see it there. Click on that back again. You can see where it was. Talking about his theory. So his theory is very, very bizarre.

So he went on to theorize that mushrooms are the reason there's human life on earth.

Yeah. So while it may seem like material from space from a science fiction novel, rather there is no avoiding the fact that mushrooms possess many traits that are unique to their kingdom alone. Fungi builds cell walls of. I don't know how to say that word. Chitin, chitin, chitin. The same material that makes up the hard outer shell of insects and other arthropods.

I'm so country. I said shit.

Chitin could be chitten. Chitin like chitlins. These cell walls contain similar chemicals found in butterfly and beetle wings, as well as the plumage of some colorful birds, such as peacocks, living spores. Okay, so we've read that, but what is it? There was something about his theory where he's explaining his theory of how it would have worked. That's it? Well, essentially, his theory was that they experimented with mushrooms and it made them better hunters, it made them more creative, and it made him figure out language. And he thinks it's responsible for. There's like this weird mystery of the human brain size. It doubled over a period of 2 million years, and there's no real solid explanation. It's a very strange thing. And apparently the biggest mystery in all the fossil record when it comes to animals and evolution. How did the human brain double over 2 million years?

Oh, dude had him in psilocybin.

Probably had a part of it. Or aliens, right? Maybe aliens. Yeah, maybe both. Maybe they are aliens. You know? Maybe they are aliens. Maybe we're just looking the wrong way.

Maybe we're fucking aliens, right?

I think we probably are. I think we probably are. We doesn't seem like we belong here.

You know what I tell somebody all the time? My new theory is because my life turned out in such a way, I never dreamed that this is a simulation and that there is an overweight, nerdy alien that plays me. And that during my shop, I think about this all the time when I'm high and that my sleeping hours are like, when he's doing his normal stuff and my waking hours are his 2 hours a day. And I just imagine this, like, kid that's looking back like, mom, you won't believe what I've done with that fat dude the last nine months. It's fucking crazy. He's one of the most famous artists in the world. And she's like, you got. Get off. He's like, but he's going to the Grammys.

Yeah, it's like a super hyped version of Red Dead Redemption.

My dude's telling people, like, y'all remember that dude we thought wasn't gonna do it? He did it. Fucking figured it out.

If it's a simulation, it's a really good one. We're in a good timeline, brother.

Oh, it couldn't be.

We're in a really good episode. We got a good group of writers.

It couldn't have got any show, and.

You got writers like this. These writers are amazing. This fucking show is always entertaining. Every day there's drama.

Yeah. Especially right now. We're in the middle of the drama.

Oh, my goodness. There's so much. There's so much. You could get overwhelmed just looking at the fucking news every day.

It's a great time for me to be in the middle of a tour. Yeah, I've missed it all. I'm doing five shows a week, and I'm so in the vortex of touring.

Yeah, good.

We do that old school rock and roll shit, so we really do play five shows a week for. For 1213 weeks, you know?

That's amazing.

It's awesome, dude.

But again, that's why you're so comfortable up there. You're so just.

Yeah, it reeks of a man has done a thousand. It's like when you see a comedian up there, really comfortable. It's like when I watched the tale at the comedy cellar, when he leaned back on the wall.

Yeah.

I was like, oh, he's fitting to kill when he just walked straight up and lean back. And then he calls Ian up, and Ian's just throwing, you know, just shit at him, and he's just lightning in on fire. It's just. It was so good.

Yeah, they're. That's a good hammer and nail. The two of those guys together, too. He did that at the club here.

Yeah. I feel like it's. It reminds me of, like, the early phases of, like, a bumping mics thing. Like, a new version of that.

Right.

Which. Cause when him and Jeff Ross are together, it's like when David Lucas and Tony are fire each other. I feel the exact same way when Jeff Ross and David teller near each other.

Yeah.

I get that same excited feeling of like, oh, some shit's gonna pop off. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. When David and Tony go after each other, there's, like, hours on the Internet of just David and Tony shitting on each other. It's a hundred thousand ways David can call Tony gay.

Yeah. And he's called David a hundred thousand ways to be fat.

It's also the way they laugh at each other doing it. Like, if this is a simulation, man, we picked a really good one.

Yeah. It's getting colder and color.

Elon believes it's a simulation. He's a lot smarter than me.

Yeah.

He thinks the odds that it's not a simulation are in the billions.

Really?

Yeah, in the billions, he said, wow.

I'm telling you, dude, there's a little dude that nobody believes that he's going to school every day. Like, my minecraft dude is killing it.

Do you get that imposter syndrome thing ever?

Oh, man, so much. I'm somewhere between feeling extremely uncomfortable where I'm at in my career right now, or overly comfortable where I'm at in my career. So I'm either having to catch myself and go, whoa, big fella, right? Come on now, dog. You were just in jail ten. You were. People that knew you six years ago hate you still.

You know what I'm saying?

It's like. And then I have situations where I'm like, I don't belong here. I'm having that moment right now. This is, um. This is my first album, Joe, that is gonna be in a fight for the number one album in the world. Never dreamed. Now this is like, what the fuck am I doing here? You know what I mean? Like, do you think that's a different world?

Do you think that's maybe something that you shouldn't even think about, cuz, like, your music's amazing, you're amazing. Maybe all that, just let it just exist.

No, that's what I. That's what I've been.

And that's how it's so big now. It's almost like if you pay attention to it, you're gonna go blind, you know? The sun.

Yeah.

You're kind of staring at the sun like it used to. You had a little campfire and you're warming your hands cause it's cold outside, but now you're kinda staring at the sun and maybe just be jelly roll.

That's what I. Yeah, but what scared. Being jelly roll got me to the point that they're now saying I might have a number one album. You probably know what I'm saying. And then you're in a place where you're like, holy fuck. And that's where the imposter syndrome comes in. Cause you're like, yo, I wasn't even.

That's where friends are bored.

Yeah, yeah. I didn't have a billboard hot 100 song right until 24, 36 months ago.

Yeah, you exploded. But you handle it beautifully. You really do, because you feel like genuine gratitude. Genuine gratitude comes off of you.

Thank you. I am true. You feel it. I mean, you know me. I can't believe this is happening.

I know you can't. Every corner, we deserve it.

I was just with our boy Brigham, doing some blood work and getting some. Getting some shit to make my feel better. Broke my heel. And we were talking about that, of, like, living in the gratitude of it and realizing even you saying that worse in such a special simulation, like the time of this. I know I keep going back to the same point, but it's where my heart is right now is watching me and a bunch of guys that were all at this kind of same thing at the same time three or four years ago, that you could feel the teapot bubbling and all of us being, like, a little left of center, you know what I mean? Like, I wasn't supposed to be in country music. The way that they've embraced me. Outside looking in, you to never guess. Outside looking in. You could have never said that kill Tony would be the number one live podcast on the Internet. You know what I mean? Or that Schultz's podcast would be. Or that me and Zach Bryan would have this similar. Of course, he would end up being way bigger than me, but this, like, similar kind of.

We're writing songs our whole life that nobody really heard, and then all of a sudden, they got just. It's probably the craziest synergies that could have ever happened in any scenario for me in any way. And it's inspired me to get healthy. It's, like, gave me purpose, and I've never felt more loved. I've never felt more warmed or welcomed. I spent so much time feeling the opposite of love, you know, even walking in here and playing with Carl, there was a time in my life where I would have walked in here, and that dog would have let y'all know I was not a good person. You know what I'm saying? You would have just looked and be like, why is Carl acting weird with this big guy? You know what I mean? Yeah. Just, what's up with kids were the same way do. Kids would look at me and squall, you know what I mean? And it's. It's really inspired me to start focusing on my health, too. Dude, I'm down 100 pounds now. Officially down a hundred fucking pounds.

That's amazing. Congratulations. That's really huge. That's a massive accomplishment.

Thank you, brother. It's been all food. I'm working out. I'm walking. But what I've learned is, as I'm losing the weight, it's inspiring me to just keep going by nature. I want to go walk and do more stuff because I fucking. I'm lighter. I feel better. So when the homies, like, you want to go play basketball? We're playing basketball three days a week now.

Wow.

You want to hear the coolest act of love, Joe? I'll try not to get emotional talking about this, but my whole band has watched me fight cocaine addiction. They watched me get off coke, they watched me get off lean, they've watched me figure my life out slowly, and they knew that the last mountain for me was food. So we started putting a real structure around. I hired a real nutritionist. He's out here with me now. Like, I'm only eating his food. I'm just like, super with it. We're getting any that could, you know, out of the green room for just so I'm working out every day, walking around the arenas and one day they have a basketball court because we're fucking playing in a. This is insane, by the way, that I'm playing fucking NBA arenas and, like, I'm playing where the fucking Orlando, Ma. I'm on Orlando magic court. Like, what the fuck? Feel like a fucking fat shack. But, um. So the first day it's just like, me and, like three or four dudes. The crew heard, dude. The next day, 30, the whole crew showed up for me and they don't, you know, these dudes are just.

They're just there because they know it's helping me, kinda. So now three days a week, we're in basketball courts and having full blown fucking tournaments. And it's been so good for me because it's like, reconnecting to my childhood in this really weird way of, like, I grew up in a community where there were basketball courts and we would all go play. You know what I mean? It's like, it's been really, like, it's been the best experience ever. And I'm getting to do it in like, back to that weird shit. Not only are you experiencing this with your friends and people you love, and then you're doing it at the San Antonio spurs court, and the San Antonio spurs coach is out there giving you pointers and fucking being the referee.

That's amazing.

And you're the Sacramento Kings coaches fucking shooting with you. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Elon's right. This ain't real life.

No, it can't be. It's unreal, dude. Leaving nationwide arena. But I was also telling Brigham, talking about the humility, too, is that I'm still nervous walking in here. We're friends. And you know what you tell us all the time what you told Brig. You know what he's going to tell you. We're just two friends talking. I was like, I know what, 20 million motherfuckers listening, dog. I fucking. I'm not following for that. We're just two buddies talking shit.

Don't look at the sun.

That's it. You're right. You know how much I needed to hear that.

Yeah.

Especially, like, because I don't get in my head about stuff. But just this week was the first time the label called and said, hey, we don't want to. We want to put this on your radar because it might make you want to promote the record.

Mm hmm.

You might have a number one album. And I was like, whoa, dude. This shit wasn't even in my mind when I had a number five album last year. You couldn't have told me I didn't have a number one album. You know what I'm saying? I was like, fuck you crazy. You know what I'm saying? Is this. What's in that? What's in that?

Water? This is coffee. That's water.

Okay.

Yeah. It's a wild experience, man. And if it's not real, boy, we picked a really good simulation.

It's been great, though, man.

It's great to hear that you're on this positive track, because it's all now just about momentum. It's just about staying on the course. That's what's hard for people, is getting the good momentum.

I'm building the momentum. I had a moment the other day. I was telling Schultz this. It was a really small win, but for a food lifelong food addict, Joe, I was up to 550 some pounds. I was having to weigh myself at meat places, you know, and I was telling him that I used to walk in and, like a drug addict, I would scan the room and make a count of everything I could eat. You know what I mean? Like, if you had, like, the little baby snickers and a little thing or da da da. Like, the other day, I was in my green room, and somebody was in the green room, and they picked up a piece of candy and said, did you want one of these? Because we just got hit a dab or something. I didn't even know the candy was in there, Joe. Cuz normally they get the can. They don't put shit like that in my room. And that was the first time I was like, oh, I'm on to something. Like, I'm fucking winning right now, right? Like, I didn't even notice that. I could have been eating them for 5 hours.

I didn't know, you know what? I would ate them all. I didn't even scan for candy. It wasn't even. It's not even a thought now when I walk into places, is. Is there a candy dish here? You know what I mean? That used to be literally one of the first things I would look for. You know, is there a candy dish here? I've had to make so many different small habit changes, but it's been the fucking, I was just telling bub out there and I was telling Bruce on the way in here. I feel this good just losing 100 pounds, Joe. And I'm still, I've never told my weight, but I'm gonna tell it here because I want some accountability from people. I'm 420 something now. 420 something. And imagine I'm talking. I'm walking around different, talking different. My shoulders are setting different. I'm fucking my wife different. I'm just kind of, you know, I'm moving different.

Bro, you probably have crazy powerful legs, dude.

It's crazy.

I bet you have massive legs.

Going to the gym now. Listen, dude. What? As much as you can fit on that thing, I'm throwing, of course throwing. Think about it, man.

You've been carrying around 500 pounds. Yeah, 500 plus your legs must be sturdy as fucked. And dude, and if you could lose weight now, you can have like super legs. Should they keep going?

No, Joe, man, my goal is when I come back and do this next year, it's going to be fucking insane. Like, I've never been more dialed in. I've never cared more about it. I'm never been happier.

What are you eating? Like, what has he got you eating?

Oh, dude, man, he's here. He's um, he's actually been really killing it for me. So I had from eating bad for so many years, my gut has just been fucked. So we've just been focusing on slowing down the gut. I'm only eating twice a day. I'm eating a fruit snack in between.

You ever do any fasting?

Mm hmm. Yeah, I'm trying to fast one day a week now just to work on like the autophagy so some of these skin cells so I won't be as flat. I want to be saggy. You know what I mean? Something.

You know that story about that one dude that went on nothing but a vitamin iv drip for a year and.

Lost 200 some pounds?

He lost 300 pounds. Like 300 pounds. Something crazy like that. The dude had no food for you. Just, and his fat shrunk. But his skin shrunk too.

Yeah, that's what happens. It's called, somebody told me and I could have the name wrong here, y'all. But it's called autophagy. Have you heard of this?

I think autophagy is, I think your body gets rid of all bad cells. This is like something that comes with fasting. Bad cells is definitely the scientific version of it. But I think.

I think the way they explain it to me is that has something to do with the, how do you say?

Elasticity.

Elasticity of the skin. And that is what helps. So that's why one day a week, at least, every other week, I'm just taking a full 24 hours, but I'm only eating probably eight or 9 hours a day now anyway. So I'm kind of intermittent.

That's the real bummer when people lose a lot of weight, is that you got all this extra skin. Like Ethan Suplea, he had to have all that shit cut and stitched up.

I've listened to that podcast with him twice in the last 90 days. Y'all's full three hour podcast is first here. Just. Just to kind of. I love the way he thinks. Yeah, it's just, you know, he's a guy I love. For me, I'm always looking for, like, inspiration as a songwriter. We're always writing a song. You know, as a comedian, you're always looking for a joke, you know what I mean? So that kind of. I'm always looking for that. So when I found that part, I was like, oh, this dude. And he kind of did the. Did what I would. How he looks now is a dream scenario for me. He didn't get, like, crazy big, but he doesn't look, like, saggy sick. Cause sometimes when you go from being as big as we've gotten, you get down to 300 pounds and people start looking at you like, are you okay? And you're like, I'm fucking better than I've ever been. You know what I mean?

They're worried.

Yeah, they're worried, you know? Cause. But they just couldn't imagine, you know what I mean? Even when I just told. I always forget his name. But your guy out there, the archer guy, worked at the archery store. Great guy. But I was just telling him that I. Yeah, same thing, same concept.

Yeah. If you just keep going, you know, it'll become normal for you to naughty candy. Normal for you to eat healthy food. It'll be what you crave.

Lots of protein, lots of bone broth, kind of potatoes. Anything that we're doing, whether it's rice or bone broth, we're not doing a lot of it. But when we do it, we're soaking it in bone broth, keeping it really clean, protein style, kind of going low on fats. Kind of let my liver kind of reset from just years of me eating foods, fatty foods and shitty greasies. You know what I mean, so just been kind of taking it slow, man. I'm enjoying it, though. The cool thing is he did Bilal Muhammad's weight cut. He's worked with DC. This guy. I found him from that world, so he really gets it.

And that's a complicated science. Yeah, you get those guys, like, Bilal's way over 170. I don't know what he weighs, but I gotta guess he's close to 200 pounds. Yeah, he cuts down to 170 perfectly.

Yeah, Ian does it every time. Said it's pretty effortless, man. Ian says that out of everybody, that Bilal is just insanely disciplined. Do you know what I mean? Like, when he goes into camp, he's like a different dude.

Well, that dude does. He's done camp in Ramadan and, you know, you can't eat or drink anything during the daylight hours at Ramadan. So he would have to get up in the morning while it was dark out, have a morning breakfast, go to training, not eat anything, do it to it, any problem. And no water. And you're training, and then at the end of the day, then you get to eat.

No, he's. He's a machine. That dude is complete.

That Leon Edwards fight was crazy.

I get to see him tomorrow.

He's a great guy, man. He's a great guy. He really is. And, you know, the fact that he's the. That devout a Muslim that he, you know, prays five times a day, like, he doesn't fuck around. Like he's really by the book. He doesn't even swear like he says.

Fudge?

Yeah, what's jelly?

Jelly. Jelly. What the fudge are you doing? Yeah, when are you fudging? When are you coming to fudge in Chicago?

It's ridiculous. He's like this assassin and he, you.

Know, I'm gonna get to see the two champs tomorrow, or you. I'll get to see him and I'll get to see the venezuelan vixen. They're both coming. So him and Juliana are coming out to the Chicago. Yeah. I'm super excited, man. Album release night, Chicago, United center. First time at the United center. Big, big deal for me.

Always a great fucking town.

It's such. What's the comedy club down there?

Well, they have a few. They have. What do they have zanies in Chicago? They have another one in Rosemont, the door.

The doorman brothers don't have nothing to do with that one, though, do they?

I don't know. I don't know.

Never know.

That doesn't make sense. If they don't did you hear what.

They did to the Nashville Zanys? So, you know, Brian and them own that building. And the. Through the back bar, the. So, you know, Zany's doors here, the front door, not the door. We go through the front door. Whatever that place was right here. He's turned that into a place called the lab now. And it's like a 50 person smaller. It would be like the little boy. Oh, you know what I'm saying? Like the little boy. So he calls it the lab at zanies now.

Oh, that's nice.

Yeah, it's super. It's really, really cool.

They used to have a really good room at the Improv in Hollywood. They called the lab. And that's where Ari started. This is not happening. Which became that comedy central show. You know, the storyteller show that all started in that lab. That was Ari's little baby that he created. And the old way, the improv, rather, used to be set up, was amazing. You have the big room, and then you have this tucked away small room in the back with a very small bar. But then they expanded it, made the bar bigger and made the stage by the door. They fucked the whole thing up. The whole thing's fucked now. It used to be the stage was in the back. There wasn't a lot of noise in the room. And then they turned it into a bar and fucked it up. But at that time, that was what it was called. It was called the lab.

Yeah, this place. They call it the lab. It's beautiful. Speaking of that show. God, I'd love to see that show back. This show was so good.

Yeah. You know what happened with that? You know how it all went down. Re got an offer from Netflix to do a special. You know, he actually filmed his special, and Comedy Central wanted it because he was on Comedy Central, but Netflix was better for him. And they were pissed that he was gonna do the special on Netflix, so they fired him. And he's like, he stuck to his guns. And then Roy Wood took over, and he did it for a while, and that was the end of it. But that's why it was because Ari wouldn't listen to that. They were trying to force him into doing his special on Comedy Central.

Wow.

Yeah. And he's like, like, no. Like, I don't have a contract that I have to do it on Comedy Central. This is crazy.

And they try to use the show.

They did use the show. They fired.

Fucking.

They fired them.

And not to say Roy woods didn't do great with the show, but Roy woods is great.

I mean, Ari was happy that Roy woods was took over because first of all, Roy's hilarious, great comic. But also that meant all the people that were working on the show got to work. Ari was going to take out a loan and he was gonna pay all the people that. All the camera people, all the crew, he's gonna pay everybody their salary.

Just cuz he felt bad.

He felt bad. And it was like, this is not, this is not what I want. This is not my fault. But they're forcing me into it. And by principle I have, I can't get, just give in and say, okay, I'm gonna do this at Comedy Central.

But just for, just for just us having fun today purposes, imagine if that show came back right now with, it could come in the explosion that's happening right now.

Well, I should do the show on Netflix. It's his show.

I would.

He called it now. He calls it re Shafir's renamed storyteller show. Yeah, that's what he calls it. He'll see. He still does it, but he should.

It'S on Netflix now.

No, no, no, I said he should do Netflix, but he'll still do, he'll still do live ones every now and then. Does live storyteller shows?

No, he should do it, man. It's. I think about guys like Brian. I would cry laughing to hear whatever his story was. I think about the Joey D as the mother Mary story of him going to that, you know, like, there are stories on there that.

Yeah, everybody's got good stories too. People have stories of some fucking nutty thing that happened on the road or what have you.

No, it's crazy. I'd love to start seeing people in my genre try stuff like that more they ever did it. Just try to, like, I'd love to hear, you know, Jason Aldean tell a story. You know what I mean? If he really, if he got with somebody backstage, like one of the homies, you know what I'm saying? Like, if Rose Bud was back there with him and was like, all right, tell me your best story and I'll punch it up, you know, Jason Dal Dean would at least kill a six minute story. You know what I'm saying?

Everybody's got at least one good story. One that you could concoct.

Yeah. One together the right way. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that's probably the really is probably the oldest form of human entertainment.

It's funny how. I love when, I love when anything you talk about has a theme and this one has been storytelling. And that's. It's all I ever wanted to do before I was writing songs, because I knew that music could be written that way. I would just write these kind of stories for my mother. You know what I mean? I would just try to, you know, the story we've talked about a lot, but it was a way to connect with her even before music. And then when I found out music was her shit, I was like, oh, this is the double connection. Like, oh, this is. I'm doubling down on this. And I still, to this day, think I'm writing for my mama.

Wow.

Like, to this day, I'm still, like, when I'm really finishing a song, I'm thinking to myself, I wonder what my mama would think about this, you know, in this really weird way. Like, first thought, like, I wonder, mama, like this, you know, does this represent? And then the second thought is, all right, why does this song exist? That's always my second following thought is, first of all is like, well, my mama dig it. And then the second is. You know what I mean? It's like, in the second, it's like, why does this exist, though? You know what I mean? What could it do? What purpose could it actually serve, right? And if it's a. It could be anything, as much as it's just, you know, it just makes me happy, or it could make people happy, or it could make people move. Is enough of a reason.

Out of these 100 plus songs that you've written recently, how many of them you think you'll ever record?

I recorded probably 30 something of them. Wow. I'm gonna put out probably 28. And I think four or five will probably end up circulating next year through other artists that'll just cut some of the songs. Cause sometimes I'll write a song show, but I'm just not the vessel, and I know it when I'm writing it. You know what I mean?

Do you hear it in a different voice?

Like, sometimes. Sometimes. But sometimes you just know that it's like, I couldn't sing this with a certain amount of conviction, you know? Like, for me personally, you know, it's not that I couldn't. You know, it's. I don't know. I don't know if this is a good comparison, but it'd be like, I could write a song about hating my wife, but I could never sing it because I don't really hate my wife.

Right.

I could never sing it with conviction. Now, as an. As a songwriter, do I have the skill set to write a song about hating my wife for sure, but would I ever sing one and represent myself that way? And it's just not just. I couldn't sing it with conviction, but there might be a guy in Nashville who just got his heart broke.

Well, you know, coulter walls, Kate McCann. That's the mother of all. I hate my wife.

So, yeah, I insane.

That's a crazy song. When the fact, the fact that dude was 21 when he sang that, you're like, what?

It sounds like he's 58.

I believe in reincarnation. I'm telling you, man, there's no other way. That doesn't make sense.

And if his story couldn't get any cooler, it's that he just doesn't give a fuck.

Don't give a fuck. Won't do podcasts for sure. I tried so hard.

It's crazy, dude. He told Post Malone. Post Malone hit him up, and Post was like, hey, man, I'd love to work. And pretty much he was like, yeah, have you ever want to come to the ranch? We can maybe write a song or something. He was kids. Like, folks was like, if you want to fly to the middle of Canada, we can write a song. But if you think I'm getting off this ranch to write with you. Fuck no.

Yeah. He really works on a ranch.

Yeah, that's how. That's how Cody Johnson is too, though. Cody Johnson flies out on the. He's a. It's. I joke with him all the time. I'm like, you're a cowboy that plays a country music singer on the weekends. You like because, you know, I mean, he plays music for real, but it's. He literally goes home and ranches Monday through Thursday, you'll facetime this dude, and he'll be out just in his ranch somewhere tagging cattle.

That's amazing.

You know what I mean? And then Friday night, he'll fly and go sell out, you know, two nights at the Staples Center.

Friday night, I have not experienced any of that, but I swear to God, it. So it resonates with you when you watch it on Yellowstone.

Yeah, right. You're like, I want to live like that so bad.

I want to hang out with the horses. Seems like a good time. Seems like everybody's all peaceful and shit.

We'll stay able to watch the rodeo late at night because PBR plays on a, you know, tv or whatever. And up, dude. I watch that stuff. I don't know much about it, but I just can't quit watching. I think it's the wildest shit ever.

Yeah. I watch it for bursts. But then my knowledge of orthopedic surgeries that these people are going to be receiving, and injuries and concussions, they just like, I gotta stop watching this.

I love watching stuff that doesn't seem real, though, right? Have you seen the. Is it JB Mooney? Is that how you say his name is? Amoni? Mooney. Right.

I think it's Mooney.

Yeah.

Is it Moni or Mooney? You got me thinking now.

Yeah, me too.

But he owns the. The cow that retired him.

Crazy how. Wow. How cool is that?

Yeah, pretty cool.

Yeah. But we're talking about a dude that, you know, would infant, no helmet, cigarette lit in his mouth, animal, like. Oh, just when you look at animal.

Those dudes riding bulls with no helmet on is the craziest fucking american thing that anyone's ever done that is so dumb and so emotional. Amazing at the same time. Like, what the fuck are you doing?

It is so american, dude. And especially when you had the cigarette, you're just like this. It almost looked like it was out of a movie. Like somebody overcooked it.

And at the end, those guys are always broken. Everything's broken. We had a dude on fear factor that was a bull rider and one of his arms, his shoulder had like just giant scars all over the place. City. I like five or six shoulder reconstructions. It pops out sometimes he has to pop it back in the.

That. Is she sick?

It's crazy.

All from riding a giant 2000 pound.

Animal that doesn't want you riding horns. Yeah.

And when it gets you off of it and wants to hurt you, wants a stomp, it's pissed off.

Yeah, man, fuck all that noise.

I can't quit watching them, though. I don't know why. I'm just so attractive. I've always been a trap. I loved songs about rodeos, though, is what did it. We talked about this before, too. There was nineties music, had all these like, old school, really cool rodeo records. And I feel like somewhere it's kind of like everything goes in themes. And then country music went through like, you know, the hunting and fishing era. But in the seventies, it was more of the storytelling era, like the poncho and lefty style stuff. You know what I mean? But to me, the nineties cowboy music was like, still some of the best country music ever made, bro.

You know who's got the best rodeo song for my money? Zach Brown. Open the gate.

Oh, it's one of the best rodeo songs ever written.

Oh, my God.

100% oh, my God.

Meanwhile, I'm listening to him going, get off that bowl.

Don't go ride that bull.

Don't do it. Your dad's dead. Don't ride the same goddamn bull that killed your dad. Jesus Christ.

You want to hear a cool rodeo story? Reba McIntyre got discovered at one.

At a rodeo.

You want to talk about a real cowgirl? Reba McIntyre was, like, oklahoma or somewhere, and she would sing the national anthem at all the local, because they knew she was a local singer, but she was a real cowboy. So one night she was. She was singing and, oh, this is, you know, back in the day when it was the old school, like, a record exec discovered you.

Wow.

You know what I mean? And, like, flew you to Nashville and signed you to a record deal. That's a true story, though. Reba was just like, did it because she loved it. Like. Like, if you were singing in church, she just. Every weekend, they'd have the rodeo in town, and she'd go sing the national anthem for.

Wow. How many people are like that out there? When you think about yourself becoming, like, artists of the year at 39, how many people are like that out there that are just super talented? They just never get that crack.

It's. It's.

Man, there's a thing that's inside Some People. There's a thing that's inside Some People, and it's different in everybody. Like, you're different is different than Coulter walls different. It's different than Reba's. Different. Different than Johnny Cash is different. Everybody's got that thing.

Everybody's got a thing.

But there's so many people out there that we never get to see that thing.

Yeah. I wonder how much of it is. The ones that just jump ship early, too, though, they quit. Yeah.

A lot of people quit. It's hard.

I think. I think about you're doing something for ten years to no avail, is really, really hard, man. You've all this. What I tell people. I was a desperate, delusional dreamer, Joe. And everything I regret I did out of desperation, but I don't regret one thing I did as a delusional dreamer, you know what I mean? Because there was moments. We were. We were. I did this. I went to the juvenile yesterday in Columbus, Ohio. I went to go play cards with the kids in their units before my show. I try to do stuff like that all the time. And we were all talking about, you know, time, energy, stuff into this and songs, and I talked about writing 170 songs last year. And I was like, do y'all know that? There was so many moments in my life where I. In hindsight, I'm glad nobody sat me down, really, that I had to have looked fucking crazy. You know, that kid asked me, he said, when did you feel like you made it? I was like, I think that's why God kept blessing me. Is that me and DJ highlight? That's my dj's from Columbus, Ohio.

He was there with me. We did the 01:00 slot at rock on the range twelve years ago, right, the festival, you know, rock on the range. Jamie, this is a big deal up where Jamie's from. We played the fifth stage of five stages, so we played the smallest stage there. There. 30 minutes after they opened the gates, Joe, we started drinking at 10:00 that morning because we were rock stars in our minds. We had made it. There was. We were that delusional. We were backstage, full blown, shooting shots and celebrating. There was 40 people there. There was thousands of people just walking right past our stage to the stage they were going to. We didn't care. We had made it. You know what I mean? Like, we made we. You're telling me we got 1500 bucks to do this? This is insane. We have arrived. And I'd go home, my old beat up bed, and my whole neighborhood probably had to look at me like I was fucking nuts. You know what I'm saying? But nobody said that to me. I look like the crazy person kind of, right at this point. I'm in my early thirties, mid thirties even.

And they're like, all right, big guy.

But you're at rock on the range.

Yeah.

You actually are performing there. I think you're correct.

Yeah.

I think you should be celebrating. Yeah, you're supposed to be.

Yeah. And when I told that kid that it was cool to see his face kind of light up, he was like, like, man, that's perspective. You know what I mean? I was like, dude, I was. I would celebrate whenever I would get a clap in here when I was in juvenile, when we would have freestyle Fridays and juvenile, and if I had. If I spit one line that got a. Ooh, man, I went to my cell, did push ups, and started looking in the mirror different. You know what I'm saying? I was like, it's fucking fixing to happen. You know, that kind of delusional. Just celebrate. Every. Every moment I had, I made a.

Ydehe moment, did what is this? This is the day.

Yeah, this is us. This is a true story.

Rock on the range.

This is rock on the range, dude. This is 2017, probably.

Wow. Yeah.

This was our second time. I think we've made it to the second stage by then. Yeah. This is 16. Yep. It's the second.

It's weird doing shows when it's bright out.

It's. I'm just getting used to doing shows.

When it's dark out are kind of crazy.

They heard it's a dude. It is unforgiving. Yeah. Especially when you're, you know, you're trying to. You're. What? You're working. You're trying to build something. You know, you're looking out. There's a lot of people that are coming to give you a chance.

Yeah.

But they don't know anything about you.

Well, the thing is, if you could figure it out, right? People figure out everything. They figure out how to write books. They figure out how to play baseball. People figure it out. But not everybody figures it out. That's why it's so exciting when you do. That's why it's so exciting when you make it, because, you know, it's not just that a bunch of lucky things had to happen to you, because they all do with all of us. There's a lot of good circumstances to happen your way just to keep you alive. Right. You have to get lucky, but then you also have to have that thing, like, what is that? That thing inside you that you got to get out, and you can figure out a way to get the best version of it and display it for people or you quit. A lot of people quit, man.

I tell you, there's a line in the song, joe, that. It's an old song. It's called just breathe. And she goes into the song, she ends the song by going, 02:00 a.m. and I'm still awake writing this song. Because if I get it all out on paper, it's no longer inside of me, threatening the life it belongs to.

Mmm.

I almost get emotional when I tell people that, because to me, that is the greatest line ever written as to how I feel.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, this idea that I have to get this out of me, it's like, I don't. When I write, it's not like I'm. I have to. It's like a thing in me that's burning in me. It's like I have to get this out of me whether I wake up out. I wrote. I wrote. Somebody saved me on a sheet of paper out of a dead sleep, really? Notebook, side of the bed. Somebody. Just like, I wrote notes here with you. When you'd say something that would inspire me. One of these is a song title right here, right now. You said it earlier. Tell you off camera, okay, negotiate a publishing thing. But I wrote a song on that. It didn't make the album. But Bert one night said something. He was like, yeah, man, this is where dreams go to die. And he was talking about a bar he used to go to where everybody would talk about what they would do but never did. So he quit talking about what he was going to do. But what he don't know is I just quietly grabbed my phone and wrote dreams die here.

You know what I'm saying? I went and wrote the song. It sucked. I'm gonna send it to him. But I tried, you know what I'm saying?

Never to maybe revisit it in a year or two.

Yeah. But I connect with that in a way that's writing is. It's an outlet for me. It always was. It was always a way to express and to tell stories around me.

It's also a connection to some strange realm where ideas come from. Yeah, the ideas that come to you, they just come to you out of nowhere. They just feel like gifts. They really do. Like, when you're sitting in front of the computer and an idea just comes to you and you start writing it down, or when you wake up in the middle of the night, take a leak, and you can't get this idea out of your head, you got to grab a notebook, man. Those things are gifts. They're gifts from the universe.

You've had that happen to find yourself at the kitchen table at 03:00 a.m.

The worst one is I try to convince myself that I'll remember it because I'm late. I'm like, you're gonna remember. Don't worry about it. You'll definitely remember that. Yeah, remember it. I remembered, like, one of them ever. But I write them down now.

I do, too. I got a small legal pad beside my bed, like the little one, and I got one. This is a crazy place, but I have one on top of my commode.

Mmm, that's a good.

So in case I'm going in there to pee or something. And on the way there, just. Yeah, sometimes, too, I have to grab my phone and do melodies in the middle of the night, because I have dreamed of melodies before, like, stone cold melodies in my dreams. Like, if somebody saved me, melody was in my dream, the first words. The problem was me and Deray joke about it. It took us 2 hours to write the song that would have took us 20 minutes to write because I was convinced somebody saved me was supposed to be the chorus.

Oh, interesting.

I know I'm weird when I talk about stuff like this, Joe, but this is how the universe works. I don't think I was wrong, because when Eminem ended up taking that song, you know, eminem redid that song.

Oh, yeah.

You got to hear it. It's crazy. Eminem redid the song. And he took the verse from somebody, saved me the first verse and made it the chorus. Whoa. So his version of it is he's rapping, and then my first verse is the chorus, and then he raps again, and my first verse is the chorus again. So maybe I was kind of right in the groom. I kept going back to like, you should tell him.

Did you ever tell him that before you did?

Never even told him the story. It gets. Joe, I'm fucking flipping. It gets even deeper, dog. John Manili, my manager, calls me and goes, he says, paul Rosenberg, just call me. That's Emma's manager. He says, I think Eminem wants to do something to save me. I didn't ask John Manili right then, Joe. I said, man, I hope he takes the first verse and samples it. That's all I said. And John said, whatever. I don't know what he wants to do with it. We just sent it over because, you know, Eminem is the greatest ever. You don't send them instructions or notes or ideas. You know what I'm saying? You're just like, yo, and we didn't talk about that until we met. And he was just as whipped out, too, because the funny part about him was he was struggling with whether or not he was going to keep the original chorus and do somebody save me at the end, or do somebody save me as the chorus and put the original chorus at the end? And he ended up doing somebody save me in the original chorus at the end. So he fought the battle the opposite of the way I fought it.

It's crazy, right, how art works that way.

It is crazy. It's crazy where those things come from. From the muse, you know? And you gotta respect the muse, you know? And, like, I think when you're writing a lot, like, you are like, that muse is, like, ready to go. Like, you're tuned into whatever that is that gives you those ideas for songs. You're just, like, searching for it. You're in the mode of searching for it.

No, I'm always. It's like the. Yeah, you're right. I'm in that space. I'm in my stride. I'm in my quest of. I'm looking for it at every angle right now. I wrote a song. I wrote so many time, I. Storytelling again, sorry, I keep going here. It's my fucking storytelling buggers. I. I probably have four songs on this podcast that I wrote. Just very old school storytelling, like the music I grew up loving, like how Willie Nelson would tell these stories, characters. And it has been so talking about muses, I don't. I wasn't sure if I was going to tell this story, but I would. Will I? As a part of my journey, my mental health, and with things I struggle with, I will pop into when I'm home, na or AA meetings, even though I still drink, smoke pot. I don't claim to be a part of the program because I have so much respect for those who are sober. Like, can really live the clean, sober life by the program. But it's helped me so much not to go back to some of my demons. It's taught me about gratitude lists. It's just helped me a lot.

And I go to, you know, few a year, never say nothing. Just sitting aback quietly. I'm just in there trying to learn, you know, never, never went in there thinking like an artist. Just kind of. Just. Just kind of going there thinking like an addict. So I just want to be an addict in here. That's why I don't talk. And I watched a man having a breakdown in there, and this happens, you know what I mean? People are coming in here and, you know, I mean, it's an AA meeting, right? And he's shaking, and at the end they go, does anybody want to get a 24 hours chip or a desire to change? The guy said, I drank this morning, but I do have a desire. And he was already shaking where he hadn't drank in five, 6 hours. And the guy goes, old head walks over, most gangster shit I ever seen, puts his arm around him and says, it's all right, baby. None of us came in here on a winning streak, dude. I was like, I had no intention of going to this meeting. The only reason I even went, believe it or not, wasn't because I was having a craving.

Even I had an hour to kill on the way to a ride session, and I was like, well, fuck if I could either spend this hour scrolling on fucking tick tock and thinking about how fucking Ukraine is going to kill us or. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And I went into the meeting and I left, and I walked in the writers room, and it was like, you know, it's fun when we write together because everybody's got an idea. I said, boys, I don't know if this is the idea, but I want to tell you what just happened to me. I just seen one of the most beautiful acts of humanity I've ever seen. Just the money, because this guy's shaking, he's crying, and this dude's walk. I'm getting emotional because I'm watching it. The whole room's getting emotional. This dude just super cool. Just kind of walks over to look like a. Almost like I've seen this before. He was. He was the only one. All of us were sad. This dude was happy. He walked over to smile like he'd seen it. He was like, I don't worry, baby. Nobody comes in here on a winning streak. And so I did some. I went back to the meeting. A week later, we started the song. The guy ended up being, like, 25, 30 years clean. They came in to help the other guy.

Wow.

So we wrote the song. It's called winning streak. It's fucking. I've sung on Saturday Night Live.

Wow.

It was cool. It's not even out yet. It'll be out on the album today.

Imagine if you didn't walk into that place.

Imagine if you didn't walk into that place.

Right? Yeah.

Just old church basement.

How much time have you lost on your phone where you could have been walking into a place, talking to people and getting.

Winning streak. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like, just. Just, you know, especially as an artist.

That deals in, you know, to say it again, stories and just, you know, you find things out about people when you see them interact with each other. And sometimes it just lights. Lights a spark.

Yeah, it's just. Man, you. Yeah. Anytime I see anything that makes me feel something, I feel the need to try to write it, whether it makes me happy or sad or. You know what I mean?

If you really think about, like, old school rock and roll, like, think about, like, classic rock. There's great songs, but then there's these story songs, you know, like shooting star, that bad company song. You know, johnny was a schoolboy when he heard his first Beatles song. That's one of those songs that, like, everybody listens to the words. You know, you just get caught up in the story. There's a difference between that and, you know, just fun songs. Just fun songs. Back in black, you know, it's not like a story that, like, an emotional story that gets you. There's some of those songs, you know. American pie.

American pie.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

I listen to it once a week in the cold plunge. Because the original version is, like, seven minutes.

Yeah.

So if I start it while I'm getting into my skibbies, songs over, I get out of the cold punch. Yeah, but it's that song talk, dude.

How about James Taylor? I've seen fire and I've seen rain.

The greatest song ever written, joe. The greatest song ever.

Don't listen to that song when you're sad, dog.

You will. I'll cry if I'm happy, bubba.

That song will get you every time. That song will get you.

And that's a story, too.

And that motherfucker had a voice mania. What a special voice.

And it was so effortless, Joe.

Yeah, he.

When he opened his mouth, it was almost like he was just talking to you. Like me and you. But he would sing like an angel. And, you know, he was self taught guitar, so he plays, like, shapes and chords that don't really technically exist.

Really?

Yeah. He literally, because he self taught himself. They'd be like, well, that's kind of a. It looks like a g, but you're doing this. Not that. It's like. It was crazy.

He's authentic.

My father, who I named buddies after in my bar, was a. We were driving down to Gulf shores, Alabama, one time, and I was a kid, and we started listening to fire and rain. And he starts. My family would tell these stories about music. I don't know what it was, but before they would play a song, it was like they would take. And I was like this. To this day, I would take great pride in being like, oh, I'm fixing to show you something. Something. So I'd give you the setup, you know? So my dad goes, I'm not gonna set this song up. I'm gonna tell you about it afterwards. We're gonna listen to it again.

There it goes. Give me it. From the beginning, Jamie.

Mmm.

This motherfucker.

Mmm. So look at him. All it's long hair does.

Before you went bald, when you went bald, he said, fuck it.

Yeah, that was. Hey, Mister Jukebox James.

Oh, bro, that guy could not have a fly swatter big enough to swat those panties that were. What?

He could just whack at every corner, dude.

Oh, my God.

Listen.

Voice like an angel. Sensitive and hot.

Take. He was married to a woman that is arguably a better songwriter than him.

Carly Simon. Carly Simon was so beautiful. God, when she was young, she was one of the most beautiful women that's ever lived.

I love that. None of that mattered to him, though. Watch this. So my dad tells me this story, Joe. And we are riding down I 65. I've only seen my father cry three times.

Keep that weird, Jamie.

Yeah. And we are crying. We are going down I 65. And we are squalling. I mean, like two children, Joe.

Just authentic, you know? I mean, there's no bullshit in this song.

The third verse, when he goes, yeah, you gotta let this rip then. Oh, it's a core memory I'll have forever, though, when I watch this. To me, this is some of the best the whole song. But right here. Here.

Been walking my mind to an easy time with my back turned towards the.

Sun so simple for real.

Sweet dreams and playing machines pieces on the ground well, now I've seen fire and I've seen vain I've seen sunny days that.

I thought would never end now watch em take it up right here.

I've seen lonely times when I could.

Not find a friend but I always thought that I'd see you somehow somehow one more time.

I thought I'd see you one more time again there's just a few things coming my way this time around oh, now I thought I'd see you I thought I'd see you find me damn.

So good.

This is crazy. What a team. Him and Carly Simon. Think about that.

Mm hmm. What was, um.

Bro, you're so vain.

Oh, my goodness.

Pull that shit up. Give me a. And seeing her sing it with that face. Oh, my God.

God.

Oh, my God.

What was it? Was it, um. He toured with Carole King forever, right? Do they ever have a relationship?

Hopefully.

Right? She's talking about another great songwriter. God, dude, here we go.

While she's playing the piano, son, with.

Her hair blowing so eighties in the wind. Yes. This pre chorus is crazy.

They'd be a partner at your soul, vain.

I'd rather think this song is about you. You're so rain on the pain let your face.

But hold on, hold on. Because if the song was about him, he's right.

Yeah, right. For sure.

You know, Warren Beatty was listening to that song going, I think this song is about me. Yeah.

I knew I was him. And that's live. Back when they were like, you know, that was live. Live.

That might be one of the first diss songs. Right, right. That's think that's the first disk.

When was the song put out?

Is it officially about Warren Beatty? I thought rumors that it was about James Taylor, too, cuz. Oh, really? I thought it's unaffirmed who it's written.

About, how they talk about.

You know what, man? It wouldn't shock you right. If you found out that the guy was, like, the sweetheart, super nice guy, was actually a fucking psycho, dude.

I've had. Talking about James Taylor. I've had fans come up to me and they would be crying, and they go, I'm so sorry, I'm crying. And every time I tell them the same thing, I say, don't worry. If I ever meet James Taylor, for sure, I know it. So I'd like 100% I'm gonna cry.

Ever since the singer released her accusatory track in 1972, the identity of you has remained one of the greatest mysteries in music history. But she did date Warren Beatty, right?

What came out in 72? Well, here's. When did sweet home Alabama come out?

Look at all the possibilities. Warren Beatty, Michael Crichton, Dave. Michael Crichton, Jack Nicholson, Kat Stevens. Damn, Chris or John Travolta. Even rumored flings with Sean Connery. Marvin Gaye. Marvin Gaye Jagger. Possibility of Mick Jagger.

I bet Marvin different with that lady.

She got around. With all the talented motherfuckers. She got around.

I bet Marvin Gaye was a monster. When did sweet home Alabama come out? So, you know, sweet home Alabama was a clapback track.

Yeah.

So it was in the dis world, too. So I think right around that early 70 era, too.

Yeah.

So it was after that. Your soviet came out before. Yeah, but when did some other man come out? Probably the same time, right? Just a year before.

So that was 1970?

Yeah. Oh, no, a few years before.

So they wrote it about southern man? Is that what they wrote it about?

Yeah, yeah, they were. The idea wasn't Neil Young was speaking a lot about what was happening down there in the south at the time. And Ronnie's position was just simply like, hey, man, we stayed the fuck out of your business. Stay out of ours.

Yeah.

You know, a southern man don't need him around anyhow.

Yeah.

You know, it's how. Kind of how he came back.

What a banger of a banger. What a banger you're talking about. That is a sweet home. Give me some of that.

Yeah, please.

Damn, that's a good song. I mean, all respect to Neil Young. Better than anything he's ever done.

No, Neil young apologized later. It was really cool. He owned it. He publicly said Ronnie Washington, right.

Well, you know, name. Neil Young is name checked and dissed. Yeah, I don't think they thought about it that way back then. It reached number eight, the billboard hot one. Give me some sweet home Alabama there. That's a song that you hear in the bar in the first couple of chords play and you go, oh, yeah.

You just immediately stand up. You're like, oh, we're finna party.

Oh, babe.

And I'm. I hate to be this guy, but I immediately look around. I'm like, everybody in here who doesn't know this, I don't know that we can be friends. You can't at least sing the chorus. Or if you don't go.

This might be one of the most recognizable songs ever.

What? It's gonna be a live video, too.

You take a go for the live one, especially this one.

Yeah.

Once again, look at these bad motherfuckers.

Oh, they were so funny. You want to talk about people that couldn't get the pussy away from them.

And they're from Florida.

So that's Ronnie. Oh, no, that's Johnny. Once again, how great Gary Rossington was to me. He's the greatest guitarist that ever lived up there with Hendrickson. He's on Mount Rushmore guitars. Because I can't name another guitarist Clapton. Of course, that has more riffs that you want to go. You want to hum, right? Right, cuz, like, give me three steps.

Yeah.

You like? You can. There has not been that since, if you ask me. You know what I mean? Like him, Clapton, Hendrix, like, they had those kind of guitars. But this was different because it was riffs, right? It wasn't like a solo. They were singing over these riffs, right? And the riffs were bigger than the melody. Sometimes they captured you. If you tell somebody right now, like, have you ever heard the song sweet home Alabama? And I go, how's it go? You wouldn't go sweet. You'd go, dirt. Dirt. Dinner. Dirt. Din din here.

Yeah, it's crazy.

That's how good Gary was. Mandev.

That solo in free bird is insane.

Oh, it is. It's the best solo ever.

Ever. It's hard to say because of Hendrix and Steve Ray Vaughan and a bunch of other people, Eddie Van Halen. But that solo was the same every time they did it.

Oh, the. The story about sweet home Alabama. They're sitting at a sound check, and it's just Ronnie and Gary. And Gary's holding electric, and he goes, man, I got this. I just don't know what to do with it here, being here. And Ronnie goes, well, he'll just keep playing it. Let me fuck with it. So they just looped that, and that's how they wrote the song. Just them. Yeah. Dude, I'm so. I'm such a. I have, like, skinner to me is like, jesus I'm a giant Skinner fan.

And you know what I love about Skinner? They came out of Florida. Who would have saw that?

No, dude, Jacksonville saw that straight out of Jacksonville. What?

Jacksonville's not gonna make any amazing bands, dude. How's this band come out of Jacksonville? And every song is about running away from Goddesse girls. I gotta go, ladies.

Yeah, I gotta be free. Two steps. I love you, but I gotta go. It's crazy. You know what I'm saying? I gotta go. Oh, dude, they were the best, man. When Gary. When Gary's family gave me that guitar after he passed away, it still is up there with, like, my top probably ten possessions that I've ever been gifted, you know what I mean? Of. I have it in my studio now, and I hung it in a case with the note that his family wrote me with the picture that we took the night he played the guitar. And I put a lock on the case. Instead of just casing it forever, I put a lock on it so I can still play it. So when we do the album, there's a couple of tracks that we played a Gary Rossington guitar on.

Oh, wow.

You know what I mean? Cause it was a Gary Rossington played guitar.

Wow.

And his family, the estate, gave it to me right after he passed.

Does it sound different?

It's got. Well, it's an old Les Paul and it's older, so it's got a different pickup on it. So it's got some different tunes and textures to it.

What's the difference between, like, the older pickups and the newer ones?

I don't know. I'm not as educated in it as most, like, real guitarists. I'm a campfire guitarist. But it's, you know, over the years, they always found different ways to make them so they were as they were improving them, but the sounds and textures were getting different, so. But I forgot exactly what he does. Cause he takes a pickup from another guitar and puts it in too, I think, in most of his guitars. Cause there's a lot of real guitarists that'll like, they'll want to play this guitar, but they'll want to put this from this guitar on this guitar.

Cause that's their shit.

Yeah. Cause they like the way. Well, I like the pickup on this or I like this and this, or I like the way this, you know, whatever makes sense. And then they'll have a kind of hodgepodge like that. But you know something else? When Gary survived that plane crash, let's think about him playing guitar. He had a rod that went from right here, Joe, to his elbow.

Oh, my God.

And still played the guitar that way. So if you ever watch Gary play the guitar, he always kind of played it high like Charlie Crockett, but it was down here like this because he couldn't. He couldn't full blown get full extension on the wrist.

Yeah.

So he was playing all those from 70. Whatever. The 70 what? When was the plane crash, Jamie? You know, I figured you might know.

Off the top how many people died in the crash.

I know Ronnie did for sure. I think it was two or three.

Wasn't Ronnie standing up? So.

So that video you just show might have been one of Ronnie's last performance.

He was standing up when the plane crashed. Right. Wouldn't sit down. He was drinking.

Yeah, they were just party. They were just Leonard Skinner, dude.

If he sat down, I put a seatbelt on. He might be still be here.

It's crazy, dude. It is. It is crazy, man.

God damn.

Was it what you said it was 77.

Three days after their fifth album was released.

Yeah.

Street survivors. Wow.

Just totally different, man. I've. I've gotten so far into there. We've been covering Skinner on the road for years and years. Anyways, just. That's probably not a Skynyrd song I can't play, you know? Right. If we were to go to a bar tonight, you probably just randomly pick a Skinner song, and I'd go up there and be able to just kill. Just love Skinner, dude. You know what I mean?

They were awesome, and we. They were gone too quick, you know, and I know they toured after he died, and. But wasn't the same.

Yeah. You know, the breeze, they still tour. And one thing I don't. As a die hard fan, I don't object to it a lot now that Gary's gone. It's a little rougher because he was the last living one. But Johnny Van Zant, which, who. How are him and Ronnie, Ken? I always confuse it. They're cousins, right? Are they brothers? Because, remember, the three Van Zants want to talk about a family, Joe. Johnny. Ronnie Van Zant created Leonard Skinner was the first lead singer. Johnny Van Zant took his plot when he died. And the other Van Zant brothers, the lead singer of 38 special crazy. Yeah, it's the younger brother. So his younger brother took right over. And like I tell people is there's the average Leonard Skynyrd fan that's not, like me, and you, like, obsessed with him to a degree. They don't know anybody other than him to be their singer, because he's been their singer 44 years, longer than Ronnie was. That band was only been out for four years when Ronnie died. Right. You know what I mean?

It's like an AC DC type thing.

Exactly. You know what I mean? So it's like. And the fact that it's a true Van Zant. And Johnny's still the lead man to this day. So when I go see him, I still feel like I'm watching Ronnie a little bit. Looks just like him. Still got the same long hair. He's Johnny Van Zant, dude. You know what I mean?

Ronnie was a fucking psycho, though.

No, he was. That's the difference, John. He's like a really, really calm, cool man. A guy. He's also older now. You know. These dudes are all Ricky medlock and them. He was with the original group to pretty much. He's still there. Them dudes are all in their seventies.

Yeah. And then nuts, too, because when we were kids, we never thought that rock stars be touring in their seventies.

They're gonna come out for my Jacksonville show. They came in some really last time. Yep.

That's.

Johnny and Ricky always come out and sing, man. They're fun.

That's awesome.

Yeah, dude. Still. It never gets any.

Dude. Look at you. You're living the life.

It's fucking weird.

Living the life.

It's the shit we grew up listening to. It's like. I don't know, man.

It's weird when you meet people that you. That were real famous when you're a kid. That, to me, is always gonna be the weirdest one.

It's the one.

Stephen Tyler. Yeah, that meeting that dude, meeting people like that, it's just like, you just feel weirded out. I met Tarantino. Oh, dude, this is weird.

Yeah, it's weird. Especially people you watched back in your childhood.

Yeah.

Out of all the comedians I met, the only one I've probably ever been made an ass of myself to is Ron White. Cause I literally have watched him since I was a teenager because he was such a voice for. I don't want this to come off disrespectful, but being from the south in my household, we thought Jeff Foxworthy was incredibly funny. We liked his books more than his comedy, though, because we felt like his comedy almost felt a little forced to us as southern people. It just didn't sit right. Right in my household.

In what way?

In this way of, like, there's.

You might be a redneck.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean?

If your family tree does not fork.

It was hilarious by we. No, all the books, we religiously. But when we're watching the blue collar special as a family, and I know this wasn't the way to watch it, in hindsight, we're all waiting on Ron, you know what I mean? Cause, like, he's the voice of our household, but I'm also in a household full of drunks, by the way. My father's a raging alcoholic. My mother does drugs. All my brothers do drugs. But it was like, you know, we loved. We loved Jeff. We love. We love Bill, Larry, the cable guy. But, man, when we just. Ron was arguing, you know, he just spoke to what our household was doing. You know what I mean? So when I met him, it was kind of like, man, I gotta tell mom. Hugging mama.

When he first started hanging out the store belt, I guess it was about ten years ago, he never had, like, a club like that before, where it was like a home base, you know? He was always a successful touring comedian, so he'd bring guys to open up for him on the road, but it was basically the Ron White show. Then he started hanging out with us at the store, and he was like, man, this is what I've been missing, you know? Been missing, like, a real camaraderie. Like the base, the home base where everybody goes and just hangs out. Makes all the difference in the world.

It is. No, well, iron sharpens iron, too.

Yeah. When you're in Nashville, too, I mean, think about how many different amazing artists there are that you go see live in Nashville, just fucking around on a regular, for sure.

Dirks Bentley goes and plays this, like, with his bluegrass band, like a 200 person bar every week.

That's amazing.

You know? Like his little subversion of a bluegrass band, it's a talk about. That's how I feel about our songwriting community, too. I've wrote in LA and I've had big songs come out of LA, but Nashville is just. Man, it's the killers, you know what I mean? Is the dudes that are just. The dudes and girls down there that are in those rooms every day are snipers.

They've been doing it forever. That's nothing like you doing all those shows. It's the same thing. Like, them, right? You just get real good at your fucking, for sure.

And you get to know how to pivot, you know what I mean? Like, that's something else that comes with being on that stage a bunch is like, the more you do it, the more circumstances you've been up against, nothing starts to scare you. No more.

Right?

Like, even if I walk out to a crowd, like, if I'm opening for somebody still and I walk out and I'm like, I'm gonna really work for this one. I'm not panicked. I've done it enough now. I'll even watch some guys in my band get a little panic. We'll be on the second song, and you'll see them going, like, why are they not just so excited we're here? I'm like, just relax. It's okay. We're gonna get there. You know what I'm saying? Let's just have fun.

The hardest spot is opening on a comedy show. It's brutal. I tell every community that opens, for me, this is like running with weights on.

Yeah. Talking about, like, the one of three, not the feature slot, the number one.

First guy on stage. That's the hardest gig. And it's the gig for the guys that are the youngest, that are the learners. They're learning it. They don't really know how to do it yet, you know?

And you're kind of responsible for getting the first laugh of the night.

You are 100% responsible for.

That's a man. You gotta break the room. Yeah, you gotta break the room.

Hans Kim is, like, our best opener because Han's Kim has structure. All his jokes have structure. So he puts you in this mode of laughing at ridiculous shit, and he puts you in this, like, it's like a very structured set. So he gets people into, like, the hypnosis of comedy, right? You get locked into laughing, and then, boom, next comedian goes up, and the bar is already set.

Yeah.

You're already loose, and everybody's running. But that first spot, man, you got.

To like, yeah, same with us. That you. If you're one of three, Alexandra K. Is doing it on this tour, and she's killing it. But it is a rough one because you one, you've got your fans that knew you were one of three, and they showed up early. So that's what. That's the only thing you have to advantage the rest of it is people literally walking in with popcorn and beer in their hand, wondering why the show's already started.

You know what I mean? Exactly.

You know, I've had. I tell people all the time, you're not going to be a good performer until you performed in a place where people looked at you like you were interrupting them. Right. You know what I mean? You ever been to a place where you're like, hey, I'm sorry I'm bothering y'all by playing loud music up here. You fucking knew you were coming to a bar, bitch. You know what I'm saying? It's just, you know. But those are the funnest, too, though. I got to open up for Morgan Wallen this year a few times, and it was really fun because in the last few years, we've just been headlining. We haven't got to really, really, you know, go out and do something that was so much dramatically bigger than us that it made sense for us to do it. And I love Morgan. So I was like, I'm in. And we went out there and it was cool because you feel it immediately. You're like, even with the hits I have, you know, there's 70,000 people here that bought a ticket to see Morgan walling for. They knew my name was on the bill, right.

You know, so there's a lot of people here that are with me, but I'm still having to tell you I'm still up here. Like, oh, okay, tonight. You know, I say there's three scenarios in my business, and I don't know, this is probably different for y'alls, but in mine, my three scenarios are, this one is the, you're welcome, we're here, right? Which is the simple, like, thank y'all. We thank each other. You came to see me. I'm gonna give you a great show. Thank you. It's the easy one, right? The. The other one is the thank you for listening. I appreciate that. You gave me enough respect that you sat here and listened to me. And the third one is the one that makes me. It's the, hey, motherfucker, I'm singing.

Yeah.

And you have to go through a couple hundred of those before you get good. You know what I mean? Like, I don't care. And that's what's been so about, like, the tick tock explosion is you have these kids that'll have this big hit, Joe, and they'll have five or six hits in a row, and they can start selling 2000 seats at a theater overnight. It's kind of like the podcasters that have a quick, quick flip and they go to the comedy clubs on a Friday. Yeah, but can't make nobody laugh or say, these kids go straight into 2000 seat rooms and then stand up there like, I've never done a fucking show. I've never stood in front of anybody. Imagine getting a big tick tock hit, Joe. Never doing a show in your life and showing up. You know what I mean? Or imagine it's even worse. They put you on an opening tour for somebody. They're like, we got an amphitheater act that'll let you be two of four. This will be great. You're going out there looking at 6000 people. You've never stood up in a bar. I'm watching it happen to people all the time.

I'm having to grab these kids and kind of mentor them now. And it's the flip side of it where like, booking agents are dragging them to the slaughter, of course, because, you.

Know, make money, they don't give a fuck.

And here's the problem. Imagine your kid, you're 20 years old, 22 years old, you've got a big successful record, and you're going to meet booking agents. You're excited. I've been there, you know, and the first one's like, we're going to put you right in 2000 seat rooms. You're going to get $22,000 a night. You're like, whoa, what a night. And we're going to do it three nights every weekend.

Oh, my God, I'm rich. I'm buying a Corvette.

And then you go to the next booking age and they're like, now hear me out. My plan is for you to go play these 200 cap rooms like the hi fi in Indianapolis, the end in Nashville. We're gonna go do that for six months. We're gonna get like 40 shows under your belt. You'll get like 1300 bucks a night, 1200 bucks a night. And they're like, fuck you. The other guy just said, I'm getting $25,000 a night immediately. But this guy actually knows what he's doing. You know what I mean? This guy actually is doing it. Right. But he always go, they go back to the money.

Yeah.

And then they end up having to circle back and they got to refigure it out anyway. You, I tell people all the time, you might be able to skip the line a little bit, but you can't cheat the game, you know what I mean? You had to put them hours in one way or the other.

Bubbles, the same thing with fighters. You know, I see fighters that come out and they compete in the UFC and like, their first fight, they look fantastic and they're fast tracked. And sometimes guys get broken because they, they meet top flight competition before they're really ready. They're really like an up and coming fighter honing their skills, and they run into a wily veteran who's like a top 15 guy and they get fucked up and they're kind of never the same because they really shouldn't have been fighting that guy, whereas boxing is a lot more clever. If they have a guy who's like a Terrence Crawford or someone's a really good fighter, they'll match them up correctly until they can make the big money and until their skills are at a very, very high level, and then they start challenging for a world title. But they prepare them. They get them. They put them that. The thing about the UFC is sometimes you just get thrown right to the wolves, and if you're Jon Jones, that's fine.

Yeah.

You know, Jon Jones wins the title at 22.

Yeah.

You know, but most guys are not Jon Jones. Most guys could be, like, an elite fighter, but the circumstances just derail them before they ever get there.

It burn them too early, man.

Yeah, they burn them too early, you.

Know, and it's like, want, the perfect example of this in the UFC to me is one guy could be Sugar Sean, who went on to be that guy right immediately. I know he just had his loss, but, I mean, he still looks like sugar to me. You know, that kids tough. And the other one could be that kid that we all love, but I always confuse it. Was it Hooper or Hopper, the 19 year old kid? He had a sugar Sean kind of thing going. He was a. He was a contender series guy.

Chase Hooper.

That was.

Yeah, yeah.

And to me, that's kind of the tale of the same kidney, you know what I mean? Where it's like for sugar, it kind of work. But he's. I tell this, what I tell my.

Still has a shot. He's still super talented. He just had to really get better at striking.

Yeah, he's just young and has to.

He got a lot better. He got a lot better at everything. He's really good on the ground.

Yeah, no, the kid. The kid's great.

He also went up to 55, which I think was big because he was. He was killing himself.

Good. Yeah, no, you could tell it was a big weight, especially for such a kid. His frames, they're kids. I think we still haven't seen what Sean's real man body is going to look like yet. Completely. He's just now turned. Is he 30 now? Okay, so we see him, but what they say it's 25 or 26 now before you actually see a full development.

Well, you definitely see some of these guys that are coming in that are 22, that are still growing. They're still getting bigger. Like Raul Rosas, junior. He's 19 years old, and that kid's still growing. Every time you see me, looks more muscular, more jacked you know, he's still in his prime. I mean, not even close to his prime. Just still growing up.

Yeah, there's still. That's a. Yeah, that's a. That's a. There's a growing thing. That's. Yeah, I guess it's different, too, man. I'm thinking about that kid like chase. Is that getting put into that national spotlight at the biggest fighting organization in the world at 19, you know what I mean? And you're like, tavandre sweat is the defensive end for the Tennessee Titans. I'm a huge Titans fan. He was our first round, first round pick this year, defensive in. I went to go hang out with him because I just think he's great. I think he's going to be a superstar. He's 22 years old. He's probably six 5300 some pounds, and he can't grow a full beard yet. You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? Like, he still. It's patchy. You know how it is when you're in your early twenties. It's still patchy. And I'm looking like. And I'm looking at Jeffrey Simmons, who's our veteran defensive end, who. Six, six, just cut like a. And I was like, oh, that's where you're gonna be at in four years, three years, you know what I mean? Because we picked up Jeffrey Simmons as a rookie, too.

It's like even at 22 years old, they haven't fully developed in yet. Right now, that dude, I'm looking at Devandre sweat right now, and I'm like, you still got a baby face. Like, you still got a. You know what I mean? Look. A big baby. Look at baby face sweat. You know what I mean? Look. But you see this face of him right here? That's all you need to know about his personality at Big Faye. That's who he is as a human. He's the sweetest dude ever. But you can still tell by the look of his face, you know what I mean? That face is going to slim down and get a little more, you know.

That's the craziest job. Being a pro football player is the craziest job. It's because you're. You're literally in a car wreck every day.

Especially guys for their position. They're in a car wreck every play. Yeah, I think about this. Offensive lineman, defensive linemen, guaranteed full contact every snap, 100% every time we snap the ball. Because like the Brad receivers, they're going to hand fight backfield. They're going to. There's going to be some action, but not full contact. Every play, right? Every single play. As soon as they say, hut, this two linemen are fucking collision coursing, and they're both hitting each other with the intention to try to knock the other one down first, right? The goal is like, if I could hit you and knock you down and go right past you, after that, I just got to fight my way.

Plus, pounds of solid muscle.

Huge, full blown athletes their whole life. Been playing since they were eight, colliding with each other.

And that's the american sport.

Yeah, it's a totally full. I mean, in full speed.

Any kind of crazy. That that is the american sport. I mean, what other countries even played, other than Canada? Who else plays football? Like, american style football? They don't even play it overseas. They don't even touch it.

That was when Nate. When Nate Bargossi hosted Saturday Night live. Not this time, but last year, he did that skit, that skit joke about it coming from the UK, and he was like, and we will have a sport named football. And they were like, oh, where you'll kick a ball? They'll go, no. And they'll go, so you never kick the ball. They go, sometimes it's so funny about trying to explain football to somebody not from here.

It's bizarre that we didn't call it a different thing.

Mm hmm.

They were calling it football and it was soccer. And we just said, no, we're gonna change the name of that. We're gonna call it soccer.

Yeah.

And this is football now. What are you talking about?

It's the America way, dude.

Yeah.

It's like, hey, we don't care how y'all do temperature everywhere else.

Yeah, exactly. Fuck you. We go with degrees fahrenheit.

Yeah. Fuck, you were to create one.

Fuck your metric system. Metric system is so much more efficient.

Like, nah, no, you'll love that Nate skit there, because that's what he does. He just kind of goes through trash and all these ideas. The best part is Kenny and looks at him, at the new skin and goes, what about my people? Will the slaves be freed after the war? He said they will be freed after a war, but not this one. Just suck it. I don't know. It was a good skip, man. It was really funny.

Outside of him, he's a funny dude. Another Nashville guy.

Love him, man. Big, big. Have you.

Have you seen Theo thinking at Nashville? Speaking of Nashville, guys, you've seen Theo do his impression of you.

Oh, yeah. It's the fucking. It's my favorite thing ever.

Every acceptance. See if you can find it, Jerry.

I want to thank the concrete lady. He did it with him.

And Joey diaries. Like, I just want to thank right.

Now there's somebody who's stuck under.

There's somebody.

There's a simulation, Joe.

Yeah. I think it might be.

I could. I just couldn't believe that I'd be at a place where the yvonne would one be. My buddy, he came to my la show. It just made me so happy. I almost cry when I see him. I'm so excited. But then to have him, you know, just. Fuck, dude, I was, um. I've said this a lot. There's a dream for an artist. There's nothing more pop culture than being brought up in a comedy special. Like, if you was an artist back in the old days and you got brought up on an HBO special, you were on fucking fire. You could not be bigger. You know what I'm saying? So it's like, I have those. That's, to me, is like those unreal moments when you watch a guy like Theo with his platform impersonating me to do a tee, and we're friends too, and it's just like, man, I would have never even. I never thought I'd win an award to give a speech, or more or less that the speech would be so viral that a comedian would have an impression of it. You know what I mean? It's like, it's the. I don't know.

It's the greatest. It's the greatest compliment you can be paid in pop culture is if a comedian will burn on you a little bit.

That's hilarious. That one was perfect.

I'm still like, that's my bike. The first time I get dropped in a special, I'm gonna lose my shit. It's gonna remind me of little me watching HBO specials.

You know, someone's listening is right now. Some comics. Probably gonna write a bit, put you in there.

Don't be mean. Not just be funny, just for fun.

Yeah, maybe it's Theo. Do that in a special.

The up Theo.

Such as trying to steal him from Nashville. God, I'll steal them.

Well, listen, for what it's worth, I don't. I think the wife and I are on the way to.

Really?

Yeah. You know, my wife. My wife was born in Houston.

Oh, okay.

She's always had Texas in her heart. I went out on the river up here, and it's just. I'm coming, brother. I just love the city. I love the space. Before I got here last night, just the few people that knew I was coming. I'd already got texts from my friends down here, from Carrie to Bruce to people that you just. Just. Even my wife was like, you love it there. I was like, she loves Texas. Anyway, so she's all in. We're talking about it.

That's beautiful.

We'll always be back and forth because Nashville's always Nashville to me.

Are you friends with Gary Clark?

Yes. I love Gary Clark, by the way.

Gary Clark's a wizard.

He's a wizard and something else. I was talking to his manager's name, Scooter. Have you ever met Scooter? Yeah, Scooter's the best. And I was like, I think if I came down there, we would get, you know, if I brought the culture, the way I approach songwriting in Nashville, I think we could have a little paradigm shift down here, too.

Why not?

You know what I mean?

Let's go.

That's what you feel like.

A musical mothership. Let's go.

I've told you this before, drunk, and I mean it then, I mean it now. I'm going to come to you one day, and it's not going to surprise you, I hope. And I'm going to. With a concept about doing the mother. You just giving me the right to call it the music mothership in Nashville.

I'll give you the right right now.

All right, go for it. I got a plan, man. Because what y'all do for comedy? We have singer. Have you ever been to a writers round?

No.

Joe, when you come to Nashville, please, please come a little early. Let me take you to a writer's round.

Okay?

You will have a ball. So what happens is the songwriters who are writing all these big hit records in town come and they go to these bars and they do writers rounds. They'll set up three or four barstools, and every songwriter have a guitar and they'll sing a song they wrote and tell you the story about the song. And it's the coolest. It's the coolest thing ever because. Because it's a dude not being funny, but a dude that looks like me if I wasn't me, or a dude that looks like young Jamie. And then he sings live like I'm dying by Tim McGraw. And he tells the most heartfelt story about where he was at in his life when he wrote the song and how he came up with the concept for it. And it's this beautiful thing. And there's only one place in town that's really famous for it. It's called the Bluebird Cafe, they happen everywhere. And the first time I left the mothership, I was like, I'm doing this for music. I'm gonna create this same culture for our songwriters. Because what happens is, if you can create a place where people feel safe, they show up.

Yeah.

So what happens is, cuz, like, I don't go to the Bluebird cafe a lot because it's a pain in the ass to get in and out of. So if one of my friends calls, like, hey, I'm at the Bluebird. It's a legendary spot, and I love it. Like, when you come sing something with me, it's like, you know what I mean? There's no structure. It was. You built your club for comedy. You knew that if the comedians were happy, they would show the fuck up. And that if you did everything you could to cater it to the comedians first, that they would come and bring their best, and the best comedians would be there, which means that people were gonna come see the best art. Right? Same concept. I'm gonna try to do a music. It's my next move. Dude, let me open my bar first bubble, and I'm gonna circle back about this. I just want your right to call. I don't want.

No, do it.

I just want to call it the music mothership.

It's a great.

I'm gonna. And we'll talk about the logo, because I want to kind of do a music. I want to be like, a guitar version of the alien. You know what I'm saying?

Do it. Do it up. Do it up.

Imagine you're a little alien with a guitar. You know what I'm saying? It got the music mothership.

Well, the idea behind it, you could definitely apply the music. Yeah, same kind of idea.

Take the phone so we. You know what else? What happens to. I thought about this. If I take the phones like y'all do, then it becomes a laboratory. Yeah, right. Because then it goes from, like, not only will I sing you the hit I just wrote, how about I got a song Morgan Wallins Finna put out next month that nobody's heard. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's a safe place. Morgan shows up to sing it. Nobody's video, and nobody's picturing.

People know it's a laboratory, too. And that's another exciting thing about it. Like, when you go to the mothership, you go to that bottom of the barrel show. That's a full laboratory show.

My favorite show I've seen there.

Nobody knows what the fuck it's gonna be about just reaching to a barrel and pulling out suggestions.

Yeah. That a bunch of people that are mothership fans wrote on paper. Yeah, I've, it gets wild immediately. There wasn't a warm up question. It's automatically to the. Brian Simpson is so good at it, by the way.

Yeah, well, it's his show. But the reason why it's so good is cause it's like a premise factory. Like you just get ignited by this thought that you didn't think of before that. Like in that moment someone says something about fire trucks and then you, like, you know about fire truck and then all of a sudden there's a bit. Right, like all of a sudden because of necessity, because you're forced into the situation where you're trying to, like, it's literally like you're calling on the muse on the stage. And a lot of times it's nothing like seven out of ten times, you ain't got shit for that bit. But every now and then you catch fire and that becomes like a bit.

Oh, you've. Have you ever had one birth into a bit?

A bunch of them. I'll tell you which ones. Off stage.

Okay.

Or off camera. But a bunch of them.

A bunch of them?

Yeah, a bunch of them. Because it's just like that, that, that little room too is like, so like, you can't bullshit anybody in that little room.

I like, it feels like we're all sitting indian style together.

Yeah. There's only 100 people in there. 110, I think is when it's fully packed. Dave was the first person to go on stage there.

Really?

Yeah. Well, actually, Shane first. Shane opened for Gilles Gillis, open for Chappelle. We didn't even tell the audience who was going on. We just said it's a special, intimate show. Show sold out like that. Nobody knew who it was. And then Gillis goes on stage, does 15 minutes and he brings up Dave. And Dave is like an hour and a half. And he just fully writes on stage like he had just done a special. He fully writes on stage like he has ideas and he just like, lets him breathe. Just fucks around on stage, gets a little tipsy, just fucks around on stage.

Can I tell that? You can cut this if you don't want me to tell it. But my favorite story I tell about you is my time at the comedy club with you was one of the first times I did this pod. I think you had shows at night and I went to both of them. And the first one was killer, but the second one you had gotten a little slippery. And it was fun. It was. It was. It was like. Cause I remember right before you walked out there, you even looked at me, and that's the word you used. You said, I felt a little slippery. It's just a little loose. You had your cup in your hand, and I just seen a twinkle in you. I was like, oh, I'm staying. Because I was gonna leave. I'd already seen the show, you know, and you did two shows. I was like, oh, I gotta see this. Be a little different.

It was the fun ones.

Yeah, it was fun, man, because I got to watch the same set. But you fuck around a little more and kind of get lost in it sometimes. Just having fun with it.

Yeah.

You know, like, you could tell you were like, you did the first one. Like, this is what I know I got. And the second one, you had a couple cocktails. Like, I'm gonna riff on this point a little bit. Just off.

Sometimes when you do that, you have the best part of the joke, and.

That'S when you'll find probably the shit that closes it out.

Mm hmm. There's sometimes, like, taglines just come to you in the moment, and you're like, wow, I never even thought of that one before.

Yeah, you get straight off stage and write them down.

No, I record all my sets.

Oh, wow.

So then after I'm done, I'll listen to the recording, and I write.

Yeah.

I sit down from the laptop and.

Just actually sit down and put them out. Does it help you to see your ideas like that?

It helps me to expand on them because it takes longer to type a thought than it does to think it. Right. So I'm thinking a coffee cup. I'm thinking of it instantly, but it takes a couple of seconds for me to write it, and that gives me chances to, like, explore left rights, down, up, all these different ways you can go with an idea.

Yeah.

So. And then I'll usually, like, try to write it out like an essay form. So if I have an idea and it's funny and it does really well in, like, bottom of the barrel or a riff out of nowhere, then I take that idea and I just write out, like, an essay. Just. I'm not even trying to be funny. I just try to think about all the different angles of this idea, and then I'll extract, like, little pieces of it and try these little pieces on stage.

Wow. And then you go and test them and chew the meat, spit the fact.

And then sometimes in the middle of it, you like, this sounds wrong. This sounds disingenuous. I'll take a totally different approach. Sometimes I contradict myself, like in the middle of it, I'll go, but what the fuck do I. Why would I think that I know the answer to that? And then that becomes the bit, right?

Then it turns into a turn.

Yeah. You never know, man. In the whole thing is just nothing. You just got to put a lot of numbers in. A lot of numbers in front of the computer. Numbers on stage. It's just. It's like this constant process of like building a mountain. One layer of paint at a time.

Yeah. Just kept. Just constant time under pressure.

Yeah.

Me and my daughter, she wants to write. She writes songs. She's already so much better than I was at 16. But she would come to me a couple years ago and she'd be like, hey, I want to put some of this stuff out. I've been writing all this stuff and I was torn because I was like, well, you should have the right to put out whatever you want. That's the freedom that exists. But I know something you don't know that you just wrote your 1st 30 songs and they're incredible for your 1st 30 songs. You know what I mean? Like, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, you go, go write a hundred and let's see if we can find five that are worth rewriting, rework and refiguring out, you know what I mean? And I was cool. It taught me a lot about her personality because she was a, like, I get it. She got it immediately. I would have got it at 15, you know what I mean? She got it. She was like, cool, no problem.

Well, she probably sees what you do, you know? And that's the beautiful thing about having an example, whether it's your peers or for her, your dad, you know, you get to see an example of how someone does a process, because if you're not around anybody that's trying to get good at something, you don't really know how to do it, right. That's one of the cool things about a conversation like this, because there's people out there that are listening that don't have anybody around them that's doing cool shit, right? And they think it's impossible. And they hear about this dude that was in jail for half his fucking life. And, you know, this other dude who's a cage fighting comedy cage fighting commentator and stand up comedian. Like, these fucking guys are not. They're not normal either, right? Like, maybe I'm not normal. Maybe like this. Maybe there is something out there for me yes, but I don't hear it from anybody in my neighborhood. I don't hear from my parents. I don't hear from my. My teachers. I don't hear from my boss.

Right?

And I'm fucking lost, you know? And then they hear people talk about, like, the love of writing songs that you have, the. The passion you have for creating a thing, how you piece it, how you jump up and write down the premise. You write down an idea for a lyric, and then in their head, they're like, I can do that with something. I can do that with something. I just have to find a thing.

I said, just find a thing, mandy. Just. Just. There was my daddy. I sat down with him at a bar called the tin roof on the memory street one night. Joe, and I looked my dad in the eye, and I said, I'm done. I said, I've done everything I can. I remember I was probably 29 years old. It's probably a decade ago. And I said, dad, I've been out of jail five years or four years, whatever. I've done everything I can in this business. You know how hard I've worked. Do you think our brother Roger will give me a job on a meat truck? Because my father sold meat. So did my brother. He said, I know your brother will give you a drive on the meat truck, but I want to give you some perspective. I said, I'm open for a healthy dose of that. He said, you've only been out here trying this as hard as you possibly can for five years. Just five. Four years. Four and a. Five years. I said, dad, that's five years. He said, if you went to Vanderbilt, you still wouldn't have your bachelor's degree.

Joe, it's true, right?

It's so true. Yeah, it covered me. And he said, jason, if you're working as hard as you really, I know you are. If you're really writing every day, if you're doing shows every week, and I was, open up $50 a night. I mean, yeah, you know, my story is that old school. Get in the van and go do a thousand shows for fucking gas money. You know what I mean? He was like, if you're really doing that, there's no way it's not gonna work if you're really doing it. Not you're faking it, not your half assing it. If you're really. This is all that matters to you. If you were going to Vanderbilt right now and you did it for another five years, you'd finally be a brain surgeon. He said, if I was you, I'd wait and see if I was a brain surgeon. You know what I'm saying? I swear, dude, I'll never forget. And I'll never forget calling him crying the first time I moved into a neighborhood with a surgeon. You know what I mean? You know when you call him? Like, you won't fucking believe. I just met my neighbor.

Guess what he does.

What?

Fucking plastic surgeon. You know what I'm saying?

That's crazy.

Yeah. That old man knew something, though. But he just knew that the law of work would never work against us. You know what I mean?

Yeah, if you keep going. That's the thing we were talking about before, about people bailing out.

Yeah, that's.

It's hard.

You just got to sit, man. You got it. You just got to sit, man. You just got to sit.

You also got to recognize when you're making the right move. Moves are the wrong moves, you know, with what you're doing. And sometimes people don't want a course correct. They don't want a course correct. And then it could be a bad relationship, that one. That one's tanked more guys than anything.

Yeah. I've seen. And gals, I've seen it.

The bad relationship, one that'll tank you. No, that'll become everything in your life is that thing. And then you have very little resources for your art.

Yeah.

Because your life is just a storm. There's a storm of confusion and chaos and fucking emotion every day.

Yeah. And then trying to block it out to make the art.

Exactly. Yeah.

If you can't allow it to be the muse for it. For me, it was a little different because it became the muse. The chaos that was happening around me just became. I had a moment where, and this is such a cool epiphany I had. Joe, for the longest time, I thought I was special because I was from Antioch, Tennessee, and I grew up in a certain kind of way around certain kind of people, and that I was special because that was that I hung onto that like, I'm different. And then I realized what was happening was I was just like everybody else. That's what the superpower really was, is that every fucking neighborhood in America is like Antioch almost. You know what I mean? So it was like a totally different thing. So I started realizing, oh, this isn't. This is the muse I'm speaking for every man when I'm writing. Just the chaos that's happening around me right now. This is the everyman story.

Isn't it crazy that everybody wants to be special?

Hmm?

But every special person wants to be an everyman. Yeah, I like being an everyman. That's what I like being.

Me, too.

Yeah, but when you're kid, you want to be different. You want to pretend that you're different than other people because that'll make success more attainable.

Exactly.

You want to pretend that you have some special quality and ability that other people don't possess. So that's why you can get to this bizarre position that everybody wants, where everybody in our business wants to be successful and famous. So you have to be bizarre. You have to. And then once you get there, you're like, oh, shit, I'm everybody. Everybody's just the same. Everybody's the same. I got to get. Make sure that I keep that. Make sure that I keep. We're all the same.

That's. It was. It was in my songwriting. I'm going to say 20 1516. I realized that I was trying to tell special stories and that God had put me in a situation. He was screaming at me to tell a story of a group of people that had never had their story told, but I was just going out of my way to try to come up with a special story, you know what I mean? And then when I started being like, you know what? No, I'm just gonna write about my neighbor who's struggling with drug addiction. I'm just gonna write a song about my baby mother. Cause I'm infuriated that she left our daughter high and dry like this because of drugs. You know what I mean? Like, I just started writing from that perspective, and then I realized that it was connecting with people because it was the every man story, you know what I mean? I almost called this album Cinderella man, right? And I'll tell you why I didn't. But I thought I watched the movie, and I was like. I had a moment in that movie where when he's walking. You've seen the movie, right?

Y'all seen movie? He's walking in a. For those who haven't, it's about an old boxer who, in the depression had kind. Was on a losing streak, kind of long in the tooth. They call him James Praddock. They would call him a journeyman is what we call him now. Just look like it never going to work out for him. Working. Couldn't get a job on a loading dock. Almost family could. Family split and bred one of the greatest movies ever. Russell Crowe. Right?

Yep.

And he comes out, and towards the end, he ends up fighting his championship fight. And it's a crazy movie. To watch. But when he's running, he goes by the old dock and they're all cheering for him. And I relate to this because this happened to me and he didn't understand it. So he looks at his manager. Remember this scene? This is the scene that I related to the most. He looks at his manager, goes, why are they cheering for me? He goes, because you're them. I was like, I'm the fucking Cinderella man. That's why this worked for me at 40. You know what I mean? And. But I ended up calling it beautifully broken because as I started really writing, because that was my idea going into the project, I'm gonna write the Cinderella man. So. And all I could think about was other people. Every time I'd pick up a pen, I would think about this young lady at a show who told me that save me, helped her because she was raped by her uncle. So I'm like, what do I write for her? I see winning streak. I watch this moment. I gotta write that for him, you know?

Now, I might write some of them from first perspective, but it changed everything. And all of a sudden, I was like, this album ain't about me. You know what I mean? This album is about finding beauty and broken things, you know?

Yeah.

And instantly it was like, once again, how God works. As soon as I took me out of it, the album blossomed.

Yeah.

Immediately I wrote a hump, wrote 80 songs that sucked. Just couldn't find my way to what story I was trying to tell, you know? And just as soon as I was like, let's go back to where's the muse coming from? Who am I writing for? I say I'm the voice of the voiceless. When I. When I had the opportunity to go talk about fentanyl down at Capitol Hill, I didn't hesitate. I knew I was going to talk for a bunch of people that couldn't talk, you know what I mean? It's like, who am I writing this for, right? And, dude, it changed that whole writing style, dog. And then I got lost and wrote another. Now I'm having fun. I got a direction. I feel like I've heard from God. I'm Moses, you know what I'm saying? The burning bushes spoke. I know what I'm supposed to be writing about, you know, it took me eight to 16 months to get there. But that's just how it works.

What you're saying, too, about taking yourself out of it.

Soon as I took me out of it, you know what I mean? As soon as I took me out of it. It was that easy. Snap. That fast.

It's almost like a trap. Like, it's the you're so vain song. Yeah, it's like a trap, like, that trap of thinking about yourself. You. You waste so much of your resources. So much of your resources, like, thinking about how you want to come off, how you want people to react to it, how you want to, like, get out there and kill it in front of everybody and you miss all the beautiful magic.

Mmm.

All the magic.

It's right there.

Yeah.

You know, and you're just missing. You get lost in the audience, and.

When you're at your best, you are them. You are one of them. You're, like, singing for them.

You know, when I'm at my best, it's when. I didn't know they were cheer. I didn't know they were even cheering for me.

Right.

It's because I'm one of them. You know what I mean? It's kind of like the. Yeah, it's that. It's that same kind. Yeah. This album was the most fun I've ever had getting to an album. I learned so much about myself.

I think that's one of the things that people really dislike about stars. Like famous people, like, people that you think of as stars, that they somehow think they're better than everybody else. That's the thing that people, like, dislike the most. Like, oh, they think they're better than us. They live in Beverly Hills. They think they're better than us. Cause they're a star. You ain't better than us. And it's like when someone can do what you do and stay the same person and stay them. Just a better version of who you used to be, but stay. Stay normal.

Yeah. And actually getting better every day. Cause I'm doing the work, trying to be better. You know what I mean? I was telling the Titans when I went and talked to him at the game, I was like, I focus, and I don't focus on winning anything but life. Like, I know that everything else is going to be good as long as I'm focused on being a good father. Like, priority number one is like, am I good husband? What I've learned is, if I'm winning as a husband and I'm winning as a father, I am fucking kicking ass in business.

Yeah. The last one is home dramas.

Yeah.

You don't want no home drama.

It's crazy, but it's also. That's something we talk about things that distracted people. I was in so many bad relationships early or even times in my life, I was single, courting multiple women. And that's such a distraction. Like, when I got with my wife and fell, like, to the point of being like, I don't want to spend time with any woman but you. When I have the time I have to spend, I want to spend it with you. And all my. It's like my whole world suddenly went from feeling like it was this big to this big, and when it got that small, I was like, oh, man, this is it. We're in a foxhole. And then I just started kicking ass outside of that, you know what I'm saying? Life just starts winning. Like, oh, dude, it's because I'm fucking winning at home.

It's also what you're saying, too, about your resources. Like, you have so much more to give, you know, and everything's positive. A happy home life, like, feeds off your happy business life and your happy performing life. That's what we all want, you know? We all want a beautiful community of people that are, like, enjoying life and experiencing life together. Your family and your friends and the people you fuck around with. You just want a beautiful community of people having a good time. That's possible, but it's hard. And that's why it's so wonderful when you get it, because you know that there's a lot of people out there that are never gonna get it.

Mmm. Man, that's deep. That's probably the hardest part. It's a lot of work towards it, too, though, man. A lot of.

It's a lot of work on yourself.

Yeah, yeah, lots of. Lots of work. That's a. That's work and relationships, though.

Just think about the arc that you've gone to through from being a kid, getting arrested as a kid, spending all that time in juvenile and jail, and then getting free and then figuring out that you're talented and then pursuing this crazy, impossible dream, you know, to where you are now. It's nuts.

Sitting on the biggest podcast of the world. My bubble.

It's an amazing story. I mean, it's an amazing. If it was in a movie, you'd have a hard time. Believe it. That movie's nuts.

Yeah, for sure. I'm telling you, dude, that little fat, nerdy alien that's playing me on the game every day, fucking killing it.

He's killing it, my brother. I appreciate you very much. Yeah, I love you very much.

I gotta. I gotta put Jamie on blast before we go, though. Oh, Jamie, we had a deal. Me and Jamie had some cocktails one night. I look at Jamie and we had a deal that if I ever played Ohio Stadium, Joe Rogan, Jamie was gonna come out and play the guitar.

Jamie, got any video of you playing guitar?

Yeah.

Yeah, I used to be in a band and played music on stage and stuff. Sure.

He definitely knew.

Do you have any video of you playing guitar that we. It's sweat right now. No, it's. No, it's like, you would know it was me. It's heavy metal music.

Yeah. Will you pull up a Buckeye country fest, then, so you can show everybody the flyer of the concert you're going to be playing next year?

Oh, my God.

There it is, baby. I'll see you there. Jamie.

Jamie. June 21, 2025 Ohio Stadium, Columbus, Ohio. Let's fucking go.

Yeah. Fuck. Jelly roll. Y'all. Come to see young Jamie played that guitar?

I love that Megan Maroney chick.

She's. Listen, man, she's awesome. Awesome, dude.

Yeah, my turn me on to her.

Yeah, she's. She's. She is bad ass, man. When she made her Opry debut, she wore a jelly roll jacket and it tickled me so pink. It made me, like, the cool dad for my daughter because my daughter loves her, too.

So that's amazing. Really cool.

I love you, Joe, man. Thank you for your time, brother. Beautifully broken. Available now.

Available now. Go get it.