Parody, Country Music, and Right Wing Politics | The Buddy Brown Interview
On The Babylon Bee Interview Show, Kyle and Ethan talk to Buddy Brown of YouTube Fame. They talk about his rise to YouTube fame, hunting stories, and living out his faith. Buddy gained his fame making YouTube videos from the back of his truck singing about anything from Covid to white privilege. He was able to get the number one spot on Itunes country charts without an agent or any publicist. You can find him on YouTube by clicking here and buy his merchandise here. Faithful CounselingGet 10% off your first month using this link: https://www.faithfulcounseling.com/babylonbee Be sure to check out The Babylon Bee YouTube Channel for more podcasts, podcast shorts, animation, and more. To watch or listen to the full podcast, become a subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans Topics Discussed Buddy's origin Current state of country music People are too sensitive these days Nashville music scene Big hearts and big opinions Mike Pence using Buddy's song No Green screen used for truck songs Real estate agent to country music star Coronavirus song No apologies for his Covid song Woke country songs Blowback from people over country songs Connecting with Ted Nugent Eating bugs Cool hunting stories Taxidermy stores Playing SSC Football Be so good that they can't start the game without you Pointing people to Jesus with country music Actors with ball caps on Finding a new way to be a musician How Buddy found his faith Living out your faith Country music influences Subscriber Portion The Holy Grail of country music for Buddy Pop country music Condescending cuteness of current country music Cover bands disguised as country artists Chris Stapleton Cool touring stories Embarrassing concert entrance story Touring life with Buddy Mudding 10 questions
When you scroll Facebook and you count on Facebook to give you the content that you want to read, it's like you're going up to Mark Zuckerberg every morning, knocking on his door and saying, hey, Mark Zuckerberg, what should I read this morning?
Or you could just support the Babylon Bee.
Babylon B.com slash plans.
You can subscribe.
You get full-length podcasts, add-free podcasts.
You get ad-free web browsing on our site, premium content.
At certain levels, you even get access to a little social network that our friends at Not the Bee have created.
Yeah, be part of the community, the in-crowd, the B crowd.
Real people, real interviews.
I just have to say that I object strenuously to your use of the word hilarious.
Hard-hitting questions.
What do you think about feminism?
Do you like it?
Taking you to the cutting edge of truth.
Yeah, well, Last Jedi is one of the worst movies ever made, and it was very clear that Brian Johnson doesn't like Star Wars.
Kyle pulls no punches.
I want to ask how you're able to sleep at night.
Ethan brings bone-shattering common sense from the top rope.
If I may, how double dare you?
This is the Babylon Bee interview show.
Well, howdy there, partner.
Howdy, Buckaroo.
Ethan immediately looked mortified that I was going to do that.
Well, because I thought you'd do more of a country, but you did like howdy doody.
Yee-haw!
We're hanging out with Buddy Brown!
Buddy Brown.
Buddy Brown.
Did you know Buddy Brown?
Buddy Brown's like big YouTube country singer guy who sits in a truck and sings songs and they go crazy viral.
And it's kind of the most incredible thing ever to me.
Really?
I mean, it's good, but I wasn't going to say that incredible thing ever, but sure.
It's good.
It's up there.
Okay, but you're a Gen X guy and you guys can't like anything.
You have to be like, it's all right.
And as a millennial, I just want to reserve the position of most incredible thing ever for like very limited amount of things.
You're like, it's okay.
You're going to get to heaven and be like, yeah, it's all right.
It's pretty good.
Then you're going to be like, okay, say that.
And then Buddy Brown will be like, oh, cool.
How many of my albums do you own?
Oh.
No, that's true.
I'm a poser.
I've only perused a few YouTube videos.
But see, as millennials, it's like when we're, you know, when we laugh at something, we're like, I'm dead.
Oh, I'm dead.
Funniest thing ever.
You know, I can't even function anymore.
I can't even adult at all.
Okay.
But anyway, this is about Buddy Brown, and he's a country music singer that sits on a truck.
Well, the reason I said the most incredible thing ever is because he sits, he just like the simplicity of it.
Because you watch and you go, because even like the production quality, he does, sometimes he does produce songs and he does do albums.
And some of his videos have produced, but most of the time it's just he turns on recording, he just plays it.
Yeah.
It's like a guy at a campfire singing a song to you.
There's something when you watch like a country music video from some guy who's like a billionaire, you know, that has made billions of dollars making country music.
Yeah.
And he's singing and they're like, I'm on the truck in the dessert highway.
And you know he drives like a Ferrari and he lives in Hollywood and it's Nashville.
Well, and he's also, most of the time, he didn't even write those lyrics.
He's just performing a song that some other guy wrote.
Some other guy wrote for him.
Yeah.
Anyway.
So Buddy Brown's a real deal.
He writes all his own songs sitting in a real truck.
It's not green screen, we found out.
And so we had a good talk with him.
It was a really fun talk and he seems like the real deal, a really good guy.
And I want to meet him in person.
We'll say he, yeah, and it got really good in the subscriber portion.
We got some behind-the-scenes stories.
Talked about his faith.
Yeah, and it got a little personal there.
Yeah, a little personal in it.
A little too personal.
You can check out his YouTube channel.
Look up all his songs.
He got a gazillion songs.
So youtube.com slash buddy brown music.
You can check out his stuff there.
And I believe he's also got a website, buddybrown.com or something.
All the links in the show notes.
BuddyBrownCountry.com.
And check it out in the show notes for sure.
Oh, here he is.
Oh, look.
Yeah.
Here he is.
We are here.
We are here.
We are in the Babylon B studio, and we have legendary truck bed country singer.
Is that a genre?
Buddy Brown.
Is that the genre?
I love when you have a name where you can say it and you almost involuntarily have a southern accent when you say it.
Buddy Brown.
You slow it down and you put some syllables in there.
Buddy Brown.
Buddy Brown.
Like you add a little extra syllable to Brown.
Yeah.
Brian.
Brown.
Bell Ryan.
Is it Bel Rown?
Bell Ryan.
Bow Round.
What's up, y'all?
Hey.
Well, so you're hanging out in Jackson, Mississippi.
Crooked letter, crooked letter, I homeback, homeback, guy.
You got it.
Right.
Okay.
To me, this is going to be like interviewing someone who doesn't speak the same language as me.
Can we get subtitles?
Are y'all going to be like swamp people when you put the subtitles on the list?
I need the subtitles.
I need the subtitles.
This is the first thing I'm offended by.
We respect your culture.
Yeah.
We want to learn more.
Yeah, we're from California.
So, yeah.
I don't know.
Are we allowed to say y'all or is that California now?
Is that north of Memphis?
Yeah.
Sure.
Out there somewhere.
Yeah, we hope to visit America someday.
Yeah, we'll bring your passport.
Get your documentation.
So where do we start?
So you're just killing it on the internet.
You just started making videos in the back of your truck, making songs.
Where did that start?
I assume that you didn't just go, you know what, I'm going to become a YouTube star.
I'll just make songs in the back of my truck.
Where did this explode?
Yeah, man.
10 years ago, went to Nashville, just lived there, immersed in it, just wanted to be a country music artist and was really climbing up in the ranks and doing really well.
Had the right agent, had the right label we were talking to.
Everything was kind of stair-stepped.
And then they said, you're too political.
We love yourself.
We love your songwriting.
We can get you with any publisher you want in town.
But you can't sing about this stuff and you can't sing about the hot buttons.
I was like, well, you're putting chains on every single thing I want to do because we sit down and we talk.
We sit on a tailgate with our buddies.
We sit around fire with all our friends and stuff we talk about there is the stuff I sing about.
Evidently, that ain't okay.
So we parted ways with everybody up there and started doing these videos, just kind of talking my mind.
It could be anything about politics to God to hunting, fishing, all that kind of stuff.
And it's given me an outlet to really just take things to a point we never imagined it could be.
I love to laugh.
So a lot of the stuff is parody.
A lot of stuff is making fun of just the madness of our culture today.
But it's fun to do.
You know, isn't country music the genre where Toby Keith sang about blowing up Osama bin Laden?
Yeah.
So what?
Yeah.
When did country music become like, oh, we can't talk about political stuff.
Soft and gentle?
About 2005.
Oh, that was the year.
Yeah, it was March 7th.
Yeah, I got my calendar.
I was like, this is where everybody's lost it right here.
Right there.
I don't know, but it's just, people are just too dang sensitive.
And I think if you, especially the people that are getting hurt, is the people who are not coming at this from a malicious nature.
You know, the left really can't discern the difference anymore.
Everybody's just malicious because I don't like it.
I don't agree with it.
We don't want to talk about it.
So it's just, I like to call them out and have a little fun with it.
So is it like an anti-conservative politics thing or is it just we don't want to talk about politics at all in music?
I think it's definitely anti-conservative.
Nashville and Davidson County, where is epicenter of all country music, is a very, very blue county.
There are just very few people who are running all these labels up there.
Most of those guys just don't want to make any kind of waves.
And if they do, they'd rather lean to the left than the right.
Right.
Now, we just came back from Nashville.
We did.
We visited for two almost two days.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So maybe we've got some good Nashville stories or questions for you.
But I was wondering, did you play the bars at 10 a.m.?
We were walking by.
We were walking down the street at 10 a.m. and like all the bars already have bands playing.
Now there's a gig to get.
It was Thursday morning at 10 a.m.
Listen, my wife is a very strong woman.
She's a very opinionated woman, just like me.
I like big hearts and big opinions.
That's why I married her.
I'm like that myself.
I never could get down there and play in these bars and do it that way.
That's just wasn't me.
I want to be at my kids' ball games on a Saturday and I want to be part of their lives.
And that avenue was not ever going to be kind of that way to do that.
So, you know, we always say God gave me door number three, which is the online stuff.
And whoever knew, I mean, we'd have 200 million views in 10 years.
And the last 100 million views have been in the last, you know, six, seven months, which is really, really weird.
Yeah, that's crazy.
Yeah, I saw here that you think it said Mike Pence used one of your songs for something.
Yeah, he used two of them and then sent me a personal letter, which I got framed back there.
You know, that's bizarre when you're, you know, you're watching the news and all of a sudden like you're referenced.
And I mean, we've had that happen a few times with some of our stuff at the Babylon B and it's this bizarre thing to experience.
Surreal.
It's very surreal, right?
It is.
I don't think, you know, I'm just a simple country boy singing songs on a tailgate and I don't really try to create any smoking mirrors like any fancy music videos.
We're just speaking from the heart, you know.
And when somebody like that comes on board and starts doing that, it's doesn't really hit you, I guess.
Right.
Now, is that a real truck or is that green screened?
Like, is that you think I'm good enough to green screen that in?
You're in a studio, I assume.
No, no, it's my truck.
I like to back it in my backyard.
We got some beautiful pine trees.
I've got a ranch about 30 minutes from here.
So we do a couple different settings and all that.
Yeah.
So at what point did this become your job when you were, I mean, were you, what were you doing when you were making these videos and they kind of blew up?
I was doing real estate with my dad until 2016.
My agent and I broke up too political, that whole thing.
And then I released an album three months later that went number one on the iTunes country music charts.
So imagine that.
No radio, no help, no agent.
Yeah.
No publicist.
And it goes all the way to the top.
Nice.
So does he start texting you at 2 a.m.?
Like, what do you mean?
No, he's too proudful for that.
We'll never talk again.
But I told him I love him anyway.
So you did a coronavirus song.
And is this the first song we went viral with?
The coronavirus video?
Gosh.
That's what I know.
That was right at the beginning of everything.
We stocked the truck bed up with toilet paper and bacterial wipes and sung about, you know, it's just life.
People need to laugh right now more than ever.
And I could talk about heavy stuff all day, but laughter is the stuff that people are dying for because it is madness out there, especially where y'all live.
And what's it called?
California.
Are you prepared to apologize for that song now that we've seen the greatest tragedy in human history?
Yeah.
No.
I'm giving you one chance here.
Yeah, this is your chance.
I brought you on putting you on the spot.
That's what this is about.
Yeah.
No, funny's funny.
I said at the beginning of the video, the virus ain't funny, but the song sure as heck is.
So we were thinking, there's one thing about your music.
It's really biased in like one direction, and we were wondering if you ever think about doing some woke country songs.
So we were going to pitch you some ideas for some woke country songs.
You want to hear them?
Yeah.
Okay.
You can pitch back some lyric ideas.
I got friends in privileged places.
I don't know the second one that's referring to, but everybody liked it.
Do you know what I mean?
Me and Z.
Oh, is that like a pronoun?
XE?
Oh.
Me and Z going vegan in the dark.
I don't know what that's a reference to.
All right, man.
Man, I feel like a person who bleeds.
That's a woman.
I feel like a person who bleeds.
Yeah, Shanaham.
This is a good one.
Get everything.
All my exes change their sexes.
These are all free for you, by the way.
Yeah, these are all free.
If you want to work on a collaboration video with us, we're shamelessly trying to get that to happen.
Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be their biological genders.
Stand by your non-menstruating person.
One joke.
Forever and ever, amen.
And a woman.
Oh, Lord.
Can you believe that?
We got a few more for you.
I am a man of constant mask wearing.
This one needs no changing.
A boy named Sue.
Maybe just change the lyrics.
Yeah.
I'm so canceled I could cry.
Science take the wheel.
And I like it.
I love it.
I want some more government.
I like it.
I love it.
I want some more government.
Government.
There you go.
Oh, my God.
I'm getting over cold.
Sorry.
So, yeah.
Any of those.
I would just love to hear like a, you know, like an Antifa country song where they're like, rolling down Portland with kombuchas in the back with my friends in the smart car here and there.
Whatever.
Yeah, because they're always rolling down the dirt road.
Yeah, rolling down the dirt road with a dog truck with the beer.
Girl all up in it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
Y'all, can we pause this for a second?
I got cold and I'm coughing my side off because y'all dirt.
I'll be right back.
Did we just kill Buddy Brown?
Killed Buddy Brown.
The first time we've ever killed someone with our jokes.
Wow.
He's getting some whiskey back there at the bar.
He didn't have a title.
He went back to the bottom.
Babyloni murders Buddy Brown with humor.
Like he's got the bar.
He's getting some Tennessee whiskey.
He's going back there.
A little bourbon on the gums.
Tennessee whiskey.
Tennessee kombucha.
Is that another one?
Crack open a can of kale.
You know, I like kombucha.
To me, it tastes like apple cider vinegar, basically, just chugging that.
Just it's gross.
I question your masculine.
You question a lot about me.
So the most millennial thing about me, buddy, is that I like.
What are those movie posters on his wall?
Yeah, I don't know.
I see the open range.
Is that apocalypse?
Or Armageddon?
Dan, can you enhance?
On your screen.
You can enhance.
Maybe a football.
Oh, my gosh, y'all.
Sorry.
I don't think we're going to cut away.
That was two.
All's cough drops.
There it is.
Getting over the Rona.
No, that was freaking hilarious.
I mean, y'all got to write that down and send it all to me in an email.
We will.
We will.
Dan, Patrick.
We'll do a team out.
Buddy Brown and the Babylon B.
Oh, we would love that.
The BBBB.
As a Christian, you know, God's always there for you, but sometimes things can feel downright overwhelming.
And it can be beneficial to speak with someone who shares your faith and values.
Online counseling from faithfulcounseling.com is there for you.
They connect you to professionals, Christian counselors, safe, private online environment.
Super convenient.
You can do it through the app, through video chat, texting, and I think just about any way you can communicate with somebody.
You think of it?
They have it.
Smoke signals.
Not an actual guarantee, but they do have a lot of stuff.
And they have licensed counselors who are specialized in depression, stress, anxiety, and a crisis of faith issues, too, which you don't always get with counselors if they're not, you know, Christians.
You don't want no atheist counselor.
There's financial aid available for anybody who qualifies.
Anything you share is confidential, just like with a regular counselor.
If you're not happy with your counselor for any reason, you can get a new one.
They're available worldwide.
You can do text, chat, phone, video.
You can start communicating in under 24 hours.
It's available on desktop, mobile, Android, iOS.
What?
Wow.
Wow.
Blackberry?
No, maybe not.
But if you go to faithfulcounseling.com/slash Babylon B, listeners will get 10% off their first month.
That's right.
So why not get started today?
Go to faithfulcounseling.com/slash Babylon B. Just fill out the questionnaire to help them assess your needs and get matched up with a counselor that you're going to love.
Faithfulcounseling.com/slash Babylon B. B. Definitely get therapy, guys.
You need it.
You probably, so we should start these.
You probably need therapy.
I know I do.
That's four B's.
Yeah, there's a lot of B's.
That's all staying in.
But that's all we got.
So have a good day and thank you for coming on.
There we go.
So yeah, do you get blowback?
Or do people just kind of go, oh, he's a country guy there like that?
Or do you get like people like, we got to cancel this guy?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, you get a whole bunch of stuff.
It didn't used to be that big of a deal, but once it starts to hit a certain plateau, I think everybody starts coming after you.
And, you know, it just is what it is.
But we had a bunch of stuff going on, you know, last year after I did the privilege video that came out and that whole thing.
And, you know, started getting all these nasty grams, as I like to call them.
But, you know, when you look at the analytics, 99.6 of all the percentages was all right with me.
But the 0.4, man, they were just like, oh, this is, you know, revolution time.
And, you know, it was getting real nasty.
And all of a sudden, my buddy said, I got a guy that can help you with this.
He said, I'm going to have him call you tomorrow.
I said, who?
He goes, don't worry about it.
Just sit by your phone.
I said, all right.
So 10 a.m. the next morning, no phone call comes.
It says, unknown caller.
He says, Buddy Brown, Ted Nugent, how you doing?
Oh, wow.
Oh, man.
So me and Uncle Ted, he goes, I've been having threats since the 60s about posting deer pictures, deer hunting pictures.
Oh, geez.
And most of them come from California and Oregon and all that stuff.
So it's me.
He's like, don't worry about it.
You know, I admit it.
It's me.
I'm the one who keeps going.
Captain Bambi.
We are the 0.04%.
Yeah, we are the ones.
Yeah, I think it's funny that all these people that are angry about people shooting lions or eating deer are all about eating cicadas right now.
Like, why do cicadas have more soul?
They're eating bugs.
They're eating bugs.
Like, bugs is a big thing.
The liberals are always trying to get us to eat bugs for some reason.
That's the new thing.
That's lately.
That's the new thing.
But I don't get why a bug has less worth in that view.
Shouldn't they also have a lot of people?
We don't have many lions in southern Mississippi, but we do have white-tailed beer and we're fired up about it.
But are you to the point where in your success yet where you can go out to like the Congo or whatever and shoot an albino gorilla and post it on the internet?
I don't want to eat a gorilla, man.
I don't shoot anything I can't eat.
You could eat a gorilla?
I can't eat a gorilla.
I just said I don't want to eat a gorilla.
Good point.
Gorilla meat.
I'm going to go.
Yeah, gorilla.
I guess you got to know how to cook.
I never have heard anybody say you just got to know how to cook it.
After you kill it.
This is the hard part.
Yeah, it's a delicacy in Cameroon.
Cameroon, according to Google.
Let's try some gorilla jerky.
Yeah, but I guess that's one of the nice things.
He was asking about you getting canceled.
And I guess that's one of the nice things about being independent.
I mean, I guess they could take away your YouTube channel or something.
I mean, you got to basically be Alex Jones to.
They started with him.
They're going to work their way down.
Inciting violence or, you know, blatant misinformation.
That's the stuff that they're going after.
But just having fun with liberals, that's just going to get you a couple of fire amp bites.
Yeah.
You ever got any strikes?
No.
Wow, nothing.
That's impressive.
We've already hooked me up.
Yeah.
Yeah, that'll boost your career for sure.
You got a little canceling.
It helps a little bit.
Just the right amount of cancellation is perfect.
Well, you do have a gun on your back when you're talking about privilege.
So you were talking about inciting violence.
Yeah, you know, I was shooting snakes that day.
You know, around that time of year in Mississippi, we have a big snake problem.
So I was out there shooting snakes.
It wasn't really a prop or nothing, but we got them all over the place.
I don't want to bite my kids.
It wasn't a prop.
He's going out to shoot snakes in the middle of your video.
I don't want to bite my kids.
I mean, don't want that.
We're bush hogging next week.
You got high grass out there.
You got snakes.
It's a problem.
You got any cool hunting stories?
Yeah.
I got a really good one from my son last year.
His first year of his life.
It's supposed to be like a, you know, a 60-pound deer from 30 yards.
No challenge, nothing.
This kid walks out there and right at sunset, he drops a 10-point buck that weighed 206 pounds, which in Mississippi, you might as well, you know, have just launched Rocket to the moon.
That's a big, big deal.
So he got his picture up at the local taxidermy shop and all that kind of stuff.
He's a big old hero down here.
So I'm really proud of him.
Oh, that's awesome.
Did you have him drink a giant cup of its blood or anything?
No, I only drank the blood, you know, on a red dawn.
Yeah.
How's it tasting?
He's like, we don't know.
We've never done it.
Do you like blood stripes on the face or something?
The stripes.
Yeah, yeah.
We do the stripes.
All right.
That's initiation on your first deal.
Now you go kill a mountain lion with this knife.
Or a gorilla.
Or an albino gorilla.
Now, to help us understand southern culture, the local taxidermy shop, is that a thing like in every town in the south?
Is it like Red Dead Redemption where you live?
Well, I mean, you know, in California, you get together and everybody looks at each other's skinny jeans.
Yeah.
Those are extremely painful on a guy like me.
I feel attacked.
It's a form of torture.
A deer up on the wall is a big deal.
So, you know, they put your name next to it and they're like, 10-year-old, what are you talking about?
You can't shoot a bigger deer than me.
Or do they have a taxidermy guy at Walmart, like up at the front where they have the optometrist?
I thought they should put the deer's face that it would be making as it got shot because it's more realistic.
A little more.
No, it looks so peaceful.
He never knew it hit him.
He was gone in an instant.
Maybe just one raised eyebrow or something.
I don't know.
So yeah, that is our favorite question.
Is it got any cool stories?
Because really, we just like dude, because everybody's got cool stories in their life.
But then, are people being interviewed often are like, what?
That's a stupid question.
But really, that's what you're trying to get to.
So, like, what other funny stories you got from living out there in the snake-infested South?
You know, it's a small town.
When I never, you know, my wife and I got married, we just celebrated our 15th anniversary.
And when we got married, I never told her, Hey, I want to be a country music artist.
That wasn't part of the deal.
I think she'd have probably ran for the hills.
But I played football for Mississippi State.
I was a punter, 03 and 04.
So I kind of had that big competitive edge where I just went through the hardest training in the USA.
We saw, you know, SEC football is everything down here.
And there's so many times I wanted to quit, and the training was so hard, but that kind of got applied to all of the music because my dad would always say, Be so good, they can't start the game without you.
I thought that was such an awesome quote, you know, because that has just pushed me on to just saying you don't have to hit a home run every time.
You just keep on just pounding your fist every single day.
And I really just try to, I really try to just keep people lighthearted, but also point them to Jesus.
And that's at a certain point in time.
I think that kind of shocks them that I'm doing that because they're not expecting it.
And there's not a lot of guys.
That's also part of the whole thing with Nashville.
You would think they'd be open to that.
They don't want to hear nothing about it.
Promise you.
If it's cliche, they're very, very Jesus take the wheel shirt.
Yeah.
They don't want to hear nothing about no relationship with Christ or anything like that.
And I love to disciple young men and all that.
So it's this, what I'm doing, we say we have three businesses.
We have the comedy thing on YouTube.
We have the actual music, which thankfully it's just become a huge blessing over the last 10 years of free Billboard Country albums.
And we also got the merchandise thing.
We're just, you know, selling the shirts and all that stuff every day.
But, you know, doing taking my young boys who are young men now, 10 and 11 years old, and just really being able to invest in them is something I could have never, ever done if I was on the road in a different city every single night.
So it's pretty awesome.
That's great.
That's great.
So, yeah, you're like the real deal, man.
And I'm wondering in the country music world, is everybody like fake?
Like, are these just guys from California that put hats on and pretend to, you know, and then they just add a little twang to their voice, throw a little banjo on a song, and it becomes we call them actors with ball caps on.
Some of the guys, some of the guys really are good guys.
I've toured with some good guys and done some major, you know, country music tours with Florida, Georgia Lion, John Party, Brothers Osborne, Chris Kagle, Toby Keith.
I mean, some really great tours.
But there's for the most part, I think you're going to find that it's not what it appears to be at all.
Sounds similar to Hollywood.
Yeah.
Making it.
There's just no, there's no accountability.
You have to be, you have to be that guy when the stage is on.
You know, they all used to say, send Elvis out there.
Well, Elvis is asleep.
I don't care.
Put some uppers in him and get that boy out on stage at 7 p.m. and make him be that guy.
And I think when you have to just turn it on like that all the time at said time on their schedule working for them, it makes you crazy.
So if you just stay home and you do it on your terms and make a few people mad with you just because you have no filter, then it will feel better in the long run.
It's a slow road, but it's the right road for me at least.
Right.
I found that with some critics of what we do.
I was watching some YouTubers go off on our stuff and it was interesting just to see people from the left reacting to what we're doing.
And, you know, they have this perception of how comedy is supposed to be done and how satire is supposed to be done.
And we're just doing what we think is funny and we just like it.
And there's a bunch of people that find a lot of not just laughter, but relief in our jokes.
And I've had to come around to that because I come out of Hollywood.
So like thinking everything has to be in a certain way and knowing that those people will frown on it if I do it this way because it's not the way that everybody does it.
I think that there's a lot of crossover with you on that, that you just did it your own way.
You didn't, you know, they were telling you this is the path.
And you're like, well, no, I don't want to do that path.
So I'm just going to go YouTube and back my truck.
Yeah.
And people react way better to things that just come across as real.
You know, you're, you come across on your videos as just, you're just a guy.
It feels like I'm standing right there in the backyard.
And you're, you know, you have a real personable kindness to you when you talk.
And so a person can say all they want that, oh, this guy is an anti-masker, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
But it's hard to argue with the kind of gentleman that you are on your videos.
I appreciate that.
I used to be a, I was thinking about going into ministry when I was coming out of high school.
And I ended up going down and being an intern youth pastor at a, it was the Australia's largest Baptist church at the time.
I don't know if it still is.
It might be us 20 years ago in 03.
And that changed my life.
And so that whole, that kind of started just wanting to pour into people.
So when I'm turning the video on now, I'm not seeing a camera anymore.
I'm seeing the people that are commenting all the way down in the threads.
It's not, it becomes a personal thing because you get to feel kind of their spirit and just who these people are, what they want.
There's hardcore patriots, there's Christians, there's non-Christians, there's Canadians, there's Australians, there's Germans from every walk of life.
But I think we have the common thread of we all want self-government.
We don't want to be told what to do.
We've got it.
Don't need the government's help.
Appreciate it.
And we're all very, very independent-minded.
And that kind of brings us together.
And so from there, I just say, you know, this is on my heart today.
I'm going to pull or it's either going to be laughter or something that I really feel like they could benefit from.
And it's gotten huge.
I mean, it's really, it's such a privilege to be able to see it go so far.
Hey, guys, Father's Day is coming up quick.
You know what fathers like?
They like us.
And swag.
Swag.
You put those things together.
They like hats.
I have the perfect Father's Day gift.
I'm a father.
You are?
You are.
Yeah, you were a father.
Never wear hats.
Oh, yeah.
Look at that.
Look at.
That's not selling it, is it?
No, it looks great.
You look good.
It looks really good.
Yeah, that might be the first hat that ever looked good.
I've never seen you in a hat.
Oh, yeah.
Wear it sideways.
Good.
It's very good.
Talk it.
Look at the quality of this shirt.
It smells new.
There's hardly any sweat.
Yeah, we got lots of Babylon B shirts, swag.
We have some Father's Days.
We have some Father's Days.
We have the Father's shirt.
We have the, what's the new one we got?
We have the dad's shirt.
We have a shirt that says dad, but then we crossed it out because we realized that was insensitive.
It says non-birthing parental unit.
World's best.
So get that one.
And we've got the I identify as vaccinated shirt, very popular among fathers this year.
And you can get this shirt that says celebrating the one-year anniversary of two weeks to flatten the curve.
Oh, yeah.
Very exciting.
Mugs.
Mugs.
All kinds of shop.babylonb.com.
Check it out.
If you are a Babylon B premium subscriber, you have a discount code in your inbox.
So you can use that.
And by the way, it's like 50-50 shot.
It'll get there by Father's Day.
It's too late.
But fathers are cool.
Yeah, dads don't care.
Dads don't care.
Can I tag on another product that is very good for Father's Day?
Bears Want to Kill You?
Bears Want to Kill You.
The Ultimate Father's Day book.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's out.
I got it.
I still have hard.
I have about one or 200 hardcovers left.
The slip case.
They're very nice and fancy, but you can get it from me.
You can get it signed.
I'll throw them.
You can get from my site, axbearstore.com, or the softcovers on Amazon.
You can get it either way.
I send it to you.
So, yeah, it's perfect for reading like a normal person or on the toilet like a dad.
So, what's your story when it comes to your faith?
You know, is it just how you were raised?
Or you got a number?
Any tattoos?
Yeah, pretty close.
Pretty close too.
I was a bona fide jerk at about 15 years old, and I was raised in a Christian family, but my dad, you know, essentially kicked me out of the house at 15 years old, and I got sent to military school.
So just hanging with a really bad group of kids and never really truly bought it as far as we're talking about faith until I was 18.
And a guy got a hold of me who was about 26, 27 years old.
He's like, dude, you know, you ain't taking this seriously.
And here's what's going to happen.
And it's the first time I ever saw faith lived out.
So one of the things that just burns me more than anything else is just the is seeing the church done wrong or seeing a Christian not come through for you, say he's going to do something and he doesn't do it.
I mean, that's not something when people say they're going to do something, they do it.
It's like, cool.
And you remember that for a few days, but when they don't come through, you remember that for 20 years, maybe longer.
So I always wanted to be the guy that really lived it out, especially now that I got two boys looking at me going, you know, you're going to do what you say or are you just going to talk about it?
Because that's, you're looking in their eyes every single day.
It hits you in the chest.
You better come through.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I got a buddy who moved to Nashville from here.
We're in Southern California.
And out here, it's like way different.
Over out there, Christianity is cultural.
Maybe that would be changing in the bigger cities, but I hear it's cultural to not be.
So when you meet other Christians that actually go to church every Sunday or whatever, you have a way better chance of finding genuine ones that aren't just wearing it.
I found that fast when I moved here from Oregon.
But when he moved there, he was excited to be around more people like that.
And he said he found it's actually harder because everybody's kind of wearing the face.
But to find people that actually have a depth to their faith, you have to really like dig for them.
I don't know if you find that to be sad.
And living in the media world, I mean, you better be genuine about it because it'll eat you alive in a week.
I've seen so many people that I thought were good, good people, and they attested to all the things that the Bible says, and they're just, they're gone.
I mean, they're NYA.
They're completely, you know, asleep, as we like to call it.
So I don't know.
I just feel like I've got this late in life.
I'm 39 as of last week.
So I think, I thank God every day this didn't hit me at 23.
Yeah.
When I was throwing robbing the school buses or something.
I mean, what are you doing at 23?
Yeah.
39.
I mean, at this point, I just don't care.
And I never really wanted the spotlight.
The spotlight just kind of happened.
And at this point, it's like, okay.
I know who I am now.
There's no second guess at that.
I knew that 10 years ago.
So at this point, it's just kind of like, let's try to be obedient and build on it.
And far as he wants to take it, he can take it.
Yeah, that's like the ideal age to go big because when you have sudden big success, you get frozen at that age for the rest of your life.
Yes.
But when men turn 39, that's like the age they stay for the rest of their life anyway.
They just think that that's the age.
So it's perfect.
Yeah.
I'll let you know when I turn 39, Ethan.
I'm going to write here.
So you accepted Christ into your heart.
When did you accept country music into your heart?
that's something that you were raised on are you like for christ yeah yes uh country music It was Charlie Daniels and Randy Travis, as far as my mom and dad, you know, their influences and all that goes.
So, I love the stories.
Yeah, I love hearing a good story because a good story was everything in a song, and I still try to put that in there.
Um, yeah, yeah, and so that kind of thing is kind of what separates country from all the other genres, right?
I mean, RB is a little bit like that, too.
You can have some stories in RB.
Yeah, you ever thought about becoming an RB artist?
I'm just waiting on Usher to give me a, you know, give me a call, give you a chance, huh?
Yeah, give me like a two-week dance camp, I'll be there with those moves.
Not a chance, the serious answer: not a chance.
Well, you want to take this to the subscriber portion?
Let's do it.
Let's talk a little bit more about country music.
We're going to get all his uh behind-the-scenes uh, yeah, some behind-the-scenes stories.
This is the ungoogle-able part of our show, so you can really just uh tell it all.
And uh, we're gonna give you the 10 questions and I want to find out who are the greatest and worst country singers.
Name some names, all right?
Let's go coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
Do you have any embarrassing stories?
I could give her like hit a high note and then crap your pants.
Why am I telling the story?
My wife's gonna kill me.
Well, I want to know any cool touring stories you got.
Who are the holy grail of country?
Can a person be a holy grail?
Yeah, enjoying this hard-hitting interview.
Become a Babylon Bee subscriber to hear the rest of this conversation.
Go to BabylonB.com/slash plans for full-length ad-free podcasts.
Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.