Jake Coco | How To Make Money In The Music Business, Christianity, & Being Conservative | OAP #28
Chase Geiser is joined by Jake Coco.
Jake Coco: Producer/Songwriter/Wizard Slayer | Find what you love & let it kill you | Big Flag of United States Energy | Ring: @lilybcoco | Troubadour @ the #HATEOCRACY
EPISODE LINKS:
Chase's Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/realchasegeiser
Jake's Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/jakecoco
Jake's Links: keepyoursoul.co
Jake's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/jakecoco/featured
PODCAST LINKS:
Anchor: https://anchor.fm/oneamerican
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IAmOneAmerican
I mean, you can say bad words if you want, but not the really bad ones.
Cool.
Let me censor myself real quick.
Got to get in that mindset.
What's up with you, dude?
I got to listen to some of your music on Spotify.
It took some time.
Nice.
And I really enjoyed it.
I didn't listen as extensively as I would have liked to, but it's very impressive stuff.
I did this.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
I was checking out some of your recent podcasts, too, so it's good.
Oh, cool.
Which ones did you look at?
I was listening to Tim Young before this, and he got to the Oregon Trail, which is unfortunate because that's pretty much all I have to talk about.
So he's probably going to get an app at this point.
Yeah.
Well, I tell you what, man, that game is one of the best of all time.
And it's one of the few things where every iteration of that game since the original has been worse.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Maybe it was the second one that was the best.
The one that was in color was my favorite, but didn't they make like an MS-DOS one that was just like black and green or black and white?
Yeah, my most recent experience with it was the app they tried to launch that was just, I mean, essentially just trying to sell in-app purchases, which is all apps do anymore anyway.
I know I downloaded it and I was so like number munchers too.
He threw out some good ones.
And I remember The Castle of Dr. Brain, I think, was another one that I liked.
There were some great games back in those systems, the Apple IIe and stuff.
Those were great games.
Yeah, you know, I kind of have the same feeling about TV in that, like if you watch the original Star Trek series, they didn't have a lot of special effects tools and technology at their disposal.
So they had to rely on the writing in order to make the show good, right?
And, you know, now we have a situation where Disney can make a Star Wars movie that absolutely has terrible writing, but the production is so good that it's still entertaining.
So it's like it entrances you and you get kind of lost in it.
You're like, oh, it's fine.
It's good.
But those old games, like, they didn't have a lot of muscle technologically to make a great game.
So they had to be really clever about what's going to be fun on this.
Yeah.
I remember the Lemmings game, too.
There's been a bunch.
It's funny over the years as you kind of like, you know, you'll have a little memory and you go back and try to look for one of them.
And like, I've looked for, obviously, Oregon Trail.
I've looked for Lemmings game.
I looked for, there was this one called Castle, Siege, and Conquest.
I used to put with my grandpa back in the day.
Like he was an old Mac guy.
Just like, it was like Risk, but with like, you know, the worst graphics ever.
But, you know, fun, turn-based strategy stuff.
But it's crazy how, and I always go back to like Super Nintendo too.
Like, that's my favorite system.
And I'm sure, obviously, like, just.
Such a hipster.
Just based on my life and, you know, how old I am and stuff, like, it probably just hit at the right time.
But, and all the newer games, like, it kind of just seems like the same game with just different graphics all over the place.
And, like, the games back in Sega and Nintendo and stuff like that always just had more just different cool things.
The Lion King game, Aladdin, all those games and stuff.
Like, there's some great games back then.
Man, I forgot about those.
I played on Psychic Genesis.
I played the Lion King and the Aladdin.
The game was hard.
Both those games were hard.
Yeah, they were really hard.
But you remember you could go to Blockbuster and they didn't just rent movies.
You could rent games.
Yeah, yeah.
We actually just tried to watch the last Blockbuster documentary the other day, my wife and I. But we didn't, something came up with the baby, so we didn't get through it.
Oh, yeah, you got a baby?
Yeah, we seven months old.
Cool.
Yeah, our baby was born in January.
Nice.
Yeah, we were discussing.
So your first one?
Yes.
Congratulations.
Yeah.
First one.
As far as I know.
That's awesome.
Are you loving it?
Yeah.
Did you have a boy or a girl?
Or are you waiting until it's 13 before you decide?
We let it decide actually at the hospital.
So we just put out all 57 genders on a Ouija board and then the baby kind of crawled towards one.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
Consented to that.
So it's fun.
Ouija board.
That's a way to do it, man.
One of the name herces in Paisley is her name.
Beautiful.
Like Brad Paisley?
Yeah, actually.
I went to the same college as Brad Paisley.
Did you?
Nice.
It's awesome.
What college?
Nashville.
Belmont University in Nashville.
Oh, cool.
That's a great music program.
Yeah, I did audio engineering there.
So that was part of the reason why I appreciated your music.
That's awesome.
Nice.
I've worked out of Ocean Way before and RCA, a bunch of studios over there, and they all hire Belmont.
It's just like a funnel program, right?
I was a staff engineer at RCA.
Yeah, and at Ocean Way, so I've done the shift.
Yeah, those are beautiful.
I was way over my head being allowed.
I got to.
I was too.
I got to go direct some stuff for some country artists who, long story short, I was doing well on YouTube.
And a lot of the country scene wasn't kind of adapting yet.
This was maybe 2014.
And so they had some of us kind of come out and do some videos just kind of showing the labels, like how to do YouTube because they were kind of coming at it, you know, with like big budgets and like trying to make a YouTube thing as opposed to.
They're thinking on TV.
Yeah, exactly.
I was like, no, I just go in a room and sing a song and get some angles.
But it was so cool to be able to work in those studios with all the old Fairchilds and just this gear that I own and the plug-in versions of.
I know, I know.
The plugins are good, though.
I was actually still at school in 2014.
Nice.
Can you share the artists that you were there with?
Yeah, well, the session was listed as a YouTube pop-up session.
I did two of them.
They were like three or four days each, and we'd have like 15 artists per session.
The last one I did was John Party, Lucy Silva.
What's that band that I love?
I'm forgetting the name.
John Party and Lucy Silver are the two that I remember the most right now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I didn't mean to put you on the spot.
Everyone else, the other ones are probably like, damn it, he doesn't remember us.
So do you live in Tennessee?
I do.
We recently, my wife and I moved here last March, right when everything kind of started going crazy.
We were 40 years ago.
Congratulations.
Get out of California.
Yeah, that's good.
Yeah, we moved out of California in August too.
And we moved to Austin.
So are you in Nashville?
We're just about 35 minutes north of Nashville.
So we moved to Nashville first and then kind of settled and we're up near Clarksville now.
Yeah, very cool.
Very cool.
Well, I'll have to, after the show, I'll have to connect you to some friends and family that I've got in the area.
What are you trying?
I didn't have as much of a chance to, and it's going to cut me off for a second.
You'll still be able to hear me, but I'm still here.
I just got to reset my mic, my camera.
But what are you, I didn't have as much of a chance to look into you as I would like.
What are your sort of like goals?
What are you doing for like in terms of your career?
Are you focusing on the music thing or is it a hobby?
Like, what's the deal?
Because depending on your answer, I might be able to connect you with some cool people in the city.
Yeah, I've been doing music as my career since I was maybe 21, 20, maybe 15, 16 years now.
When I first moved to California, I got signed to a label that was like the guy's in jail now as a Ponzi scheme.
I'm sorry, man.
Have anything to do with that?
It's all good.
I think you're probably a victim.
Yeah.
I was in a unique position because as an artist that was with the company, we were kind of used as like the smoke and mirrors, if you will.
So everything seemed great on the surface.
And then find out years later that it was like just kind of a money laundering thing for him.
But still a good experience.
I got to make some music and get into some studios that I never could have afforded to be into and stuff like that.
So did some records that way.
And then once that ended, I took some time off and started my own record label.
Just an indie label.
We're called Keep Your Soul Records.
And got kind of a big catalog built with some of the early stage YouTubers.
So I just kind of saw that there was like a, yeah, I wish a lot of the at that time on YouTube, it was just a lot of non-monetized content.
A lot of people, you know, sitting with an acoustic guitar kind of singing, but they'd have like millions and millions of views.
So I just partnered with the studio and started reaching out and kind of recording songs professionally and then releasing them for these artists that already had the fan base and then kind of helped them monetize.
So that was how I spent like maybe 2011 through 2016, 17.
Which I still do a lot of cover songs and like do my YouTube channel and then met my wife and we got married.
I took some time off to just kind of settle into that and spend some time together.
And we met and got married very fast.
So like within like two months, honestly.
So passionate time together.
Yeah, it was interesting.
We met through a mutual best friend, passed away, one of my clients actually.
I'm sorry.
It's all good.
We, you know, we found light through it and found each other and miss them every day.
But just the process of elopement and stuff, everything was so fast and everything that we just wanted to take some time off.
And then now we have the baby.
So just enjoying this new role as husband, dad, and trying to see where music kind of plays in with that.
But I do a stream three nights a week where I just have a studio from home.
You can't see it because it's all over there.
But I do like a three nights a week stream.
I call the Jake Box where I just do cover songs and original songs and stuff like that and just chat about what's going on in the world, kind of like keep it a little lighter than my tweets, which I'm a little aggressively political on Twitter.
But for the music, I just like to do, you know, keep it a little more lighthearted.
Oh, yeah, I definitely appreciate that in terms.
I miss a world, the world that used to exist where politics wasn't integrated in there.
It's crazy where it takes over.
And my personal kind of political journey, I was a bleeding heart lefty up until like 2017 when everything kind of flipped for me.
I mean, to the point of like I would do the long Facebook posts and like, you don't understand.
And Hilli's the queen.
And it's got to be like just terrible, you know, looking back and cringe stuff.
But, you know, it was honest in the moment.
Sure.
And when I had those beliefs, it really wasn't something that I talked about like or was forced to talk about frequently.
It just didn't really come up because everyone just kind of assumes that artists think that way.
But now that I'm outspoken, you know, with a different, you know, more libertarian and conservative viewpoint, it's crazy how it kind of you have to talk about it because everyone, it's such an alienating position where everyone kind of on the mainstream side of entertainment and music and acting, all that stuff, like there's so few people who are outspoken as conservatives that you almost become like a meme, like everyone has to talk to you about.
It becomes like your personality.
For me, like I care more about music.
Like that's what I've always wanted to do.
But, you know, but I love America and I think, you know, American values are great.
And, you know, my wife is an immigrant.
She came here when she was 12 from Siberia.
So she obviously has seen the, you know, the negative impact of non-American values and communism and socialism and all those things.
So I only started speaking up about stuff because I was passionate about the stories that I'd heard from her.
And then after eloping, I read some Solzhenitsyn and the Gulag Archipelago and kind of learned about that stuff.
But it was never something that I planned on, you know, speaking about or even learning about to that matter.
I've always been just kind of like a musician.
And then as I started speaking about politics and stuff like that, it kind of consumes you in a certain way where at least your online identity where you become like a conservative person.
And then that's just what you're labeled as.
And you can only talk to other conservative people and you're looked down on by, you know, all sorts of different folks.
It's silly.
The scary thing to me, you know, I've heard, I've had a couple of people on the podcast that have switched from left to right.
The scary thing to me about our political sort of echo chambers is I often think that I often wonder if our politics are sort of like flat earthers.
And that I don't know if you've ever met a serious flat earther before, but I have.
Okay.
And these people have gone down rabbit holes and done a tremendous amount of research.
I mean, they're the most well-researched people you'll meet.
Right.
And obviously I'm not a flat earther.
Okay.
So just to get that in there.
Is this your pitch?
You're pitching me right now.
I can tell you.
No, no, no.
The angle I'm trying to get at is that a flat earther can tell you, can make, can a flat earther can tell you more reasons why the earth is flat than you can tell a flat earther why the earth is round because they've done they've you know they've gone through every single contradiction or every single um uh counterpoint already like they have like this sort of propaganda i don't use the term propaganda but they have like the whole cheat sheet rap sheet of well here's what they're going to say and this is this is the response yeah so i'm worried often just for myself um you know and
And I consider this to be a problem of the left, but I don't want to be a hypocrite because it could be me doing it, too.
I worry that I am a political flat earther and that I have convinced myself of something that isn't true because of the rabbit hole I've gone down.
You know?
Yeah, just self-awareness at that level.
Yeah.
How do you check yourself?
I don't know how to check yourself, first of all.
I was going to tell you my experience with my first flat earther because it's kind of a funny story.
Yeah, yeah.
Tell me.
Yeah, tell me.
We can pass back to it.
I was outside of a bar somewhere.
I was just, you know, doing bar things, drinking, whatever, hanging out with my friends.
And this guy was just standing there, like, in the smoking area or whatever.
And he just comes up.
He's like, can I just tell you about something?
I was like, yeah, sure.
What's up, man?
And he gave me the whole nine yards, if you will, about the flat earth and all the things.
And it was a compelling argument.
I'm not smart enough to care.
Even I remember drinking.
I was just, like, mind blown that this guy, A, was compelled to come talk to me.
And then, B, that this was what his speech was.
And so I listened to him.
And I didn't argue back.
I don't, you know, whatever.
Think what you think.
And then he got to the end.
And I'll never forget how appreciative he was that I didn't belittle him.
And he spoke about it.
Of course.
He was like, thank you so much for listening.
Like, people just get so mad at me all the time.
And I was like, I don't care, really, what shape the earth is.
Like, it's, you know.
Well, and smart people believe stupid things all the time.
So just because somebody has a stupid idea that they want to tell you about, it doesn't mean that they're a moron.
Exactly.
Yeah.
You can learn something new.
That's one of my favorite.
I forget who to attribute the quote to.
But, you know, you can learn something from everybody.
And it's such an important life lesson and thing to kind of embrace, you know, just because somebody, somebody might only know one thing and everything else might be wrong.
But you should still give them the grace and the time to kind of get through whatever maybe you disagree with because you might get something good out of it.
You know, there's always something you can learn.
You can always learn a new perspective or better yourself or whatever.
But, yeah, the appreciation that he had for me just not being mean to him.
And he didn't convince me of flat earth by any means.
But, again, like, it isn't something that I really care too much about.
Like, I don't plan on going to space.
I'm going to stay on this planet most likely in my whole life.
Like, whether or not it's a flat earth isn't really going to change, you know, what I need to do to make my next record or whatever.
But it was just super interesting to hear, yeah, how well rehearsed and how smart it sounded from him.
You know, like, he had definitely been through these arguments so many times.
And it was like, man, you really are committed to what's, in my opinion, probably wrong.
Like, man, you really know your stuff.
Like, that's pretty impressive.
Well, I think if – I like to think that if you keep digging, you can eventually dig yourself out of that.
I don't know, like, what your – how was your transition from being a leftist to kind of a right, a conservative-minded person?
Super interesting.
And for me, like, I lost a lot of friends, which I – again, like, I never – You don't lose any real friends, dude.
That's what you kind of learn.
And I'm grateful because I'm now in a position where I have, you know, my, you know, recent text messages are all people that I want to talk to as opposed to – you know, I also quit drinking a couple years ago.
And it just kind of – Did you have a problem or did you just decide to quit?
I had a problem, but I didn't acknowledge that.
I just honestly didn't feel good one day after – it was super strange.
I was in Vegas with my wife, my mom, and my mom lived there at the time.
My wife and I were visiting.
What a hell of a place to quit drinking.
Yeah.
And it was the week after my birthday, and I went to my favorite sushi restaurant out there, and I met with my mom, and my aunt was there with us, and I just felt horrible.
Like, we had been partying the night before, and I didn't feel good to the point where I had to, like, go to the bathroom and excuse myself.
And I was just sitting there, and I was like, what am I doing?
Like, I'm missing time with all my – I'm at my favorite restaurant with my favorite people, and I'm in the bathroom.
And why?
Like, because I made choices yesterday, and so I was like, oh, let me just quit drinking for a week.
So I did that, and then felt so good.
After that, I was like, I could probably do a month, and then I was like, let me do a year.
And then now it's been, like, two and a half years, and I honestly forget about it.
So it's weird because I know a lot of folks that go through kind of, like, the program stuff, there's, like, this step of I have a problem, and by all means, I was drinking way too much and partying, so I did have a problem.
But I didn't go that kind of traditional route of acknowledging that or anything.
It just was like a, hey, I feel like crap, and I'm not being emotionally responsible to the people that love me and that I love.
So would you consider yourself an alcoholic, or do you think that you caught – you nipped it in the bud?
I don't think I'm intelligent enough to – or, you know, well-learned enough on the specific – I don't mean to ask you, like, a super specific, like, personal question.
No, don't be that.
It's a good question, and I've thought about it a lot of times.
I just – I know that their whole – the whole thing in the program is always you don't want to – like, step one is admitting you have a problem, and I don't want to be there.
Right.
It's like, I didn't have a problem.
But you didn't do the program, though.
Exactly, yeah.
So for me, I think the problem for me was – and the way I kind of word it is I was really good at drinking.
And I think that's a bigger problem sometimes than being bad at drinking.
Like, I think there's guys that get really drunk, and, you know, they get fighty, and they get, you know, certain ways.
And I'm the opposite.
I get super drunk, and I'm like the life of the party, and everything's great.
And I'm up on stage, and you know, everyone's doing shots, and it's a lead in that.
And you're in the music business too, so it's just so integrated in the culture.
Yeah, I was doing, I mean, you're from Nashville, or you've spent time here, so you understand the honky-tonk world.
I was doing that out in San Diego.
Um, there's a tin roof out in San Diego that had opened up, and uh, I was the best there, finger at chicken fingers, the buffalo chicken finger tender stuff.
Yeah, so good, so good.
Um, but I was doing uh five nights a week, four nights a week, uh, three-hour to four-hour long shows there.
So, you're drinking four nights a week, yeah.
I mean, we were doing by the end, I did like a three-year residency, and by the end, we were doing I mean, 12 to 15 shots plus the beers we were drinking through the show, and then whatever we drank before the show, and whatever after.
It was all just you know, people are bringing you drinks.
It's that Nashville vibe of just everyone bringing you drinks, and that's just kind of what the night is.
And you don't think about it, and uh, and to go back to what I was saying, like without that negative side of it for me, like I wasn't, like I said, a fighty person or I wouldn't get an argument or anything like that.
Um, without that happening, I think it's challenging to see that you have a problem or whatever.
Um, but but I think that it is a unique or a separate type of problem to be to not have a problem, if that makes sense, to not be the fighty person, because then you're an enabler, and I think that was more my issue.
Yeah, I um, I quit drinking in 2015, okay, but not because I was an alcoholic or had a problem, but I just sort of declared in it once when I was drunk that I wasn't gonna have another drink until I was a millionaire.
Nice, and I haven't.
Are you standing up to do that?
Yeah, I'm not, I mean, I'm not gonna drink.
You know, I don't know if my net worth is a million dollars.
There's arguments, probably not, um, but I do have a small business, you know, and if you hit a million, will you have a drink?
Is that the uh, I don't know yet, you know, I always used to say, yeah, right?
Yeah, I always used to say, yeah, but the thing that I've struggled with as being someone who doesn't drink is everybody automatically assumes I'm an alcoholic, and that bothers me.
It's like, no, I don't have, I never had a problem.
Like, I just kind of do too, and then, but then I don't want to be that guy that's like, no, listen, I don't have a problem, because then you're that guy.
It's, you know, it's, it's this interesting social scenario to be put in.
And it, I don't think it makes people purposefully uncomfortable, but they just don't know what to, like, when you go to like a function, they're like, I can't believe you avocado, or what do you, what do you want?
And I just, I'm just here.
Like, I pretend I'm the same, you know, but I'm sure I'm also, you know, a different version of myself than a lot of my drinking friends are used to.
And that's, you know, it's fair for them to try to get used to the new version and stuff.
Plus, now I'm such a homebody.
That's one of the reasons I used to kind of drink and party so much and was because I'm so I have Asperger's.
So social situations for me aren't bad.
It's just interesting.
It's unique for me to navigate them.
They don't come naturally.
And so I've kind of, I do a lot of scripting and stuff like that where I put together, I just, I'm like a different version of myself, I guess, when I'm out.
And it was easier for me to get to that version of myself through drinking.
But I'm over the years now, I've learned kind of ways to get to those, you know, my more social version of myself without does it make you uncomfortable to do things like this podcast?
No, not honestly.
I've always kind of been gravitated towards or gravitated towards kind of public speaking and things like that.
That's never really bothered me, stage for performance stuff.
Yeah.
It is a little weird, the whole podcast world where just on a stage, you know, there's a bunch of people.
So it kind of like you can't forget it, obviously.
I find it interesting with podcasts where like you and I could get super, you know, deep in some conversation and forget.
And, you know, I have no idea how many people are watching or how many people will watch in the future.
And that's, that leads to really good conversations, honestly.
And it's a good, it's a net positive, I think, for podcasting and for these kind of long format discussions.
It's just, it's a lot different than what I'm used to because on stage, you're like, oh, there's four people here.
Let me just dick around or there's 4,000 people here.
Let me do my bet.
Like, you know, but it's good.
Yeah, it was last night.
We did a big podcast with a couple of great guests.
I had Ian Miles Chong on and Nikki Klein and my buddy Andrew.
And after it was over, it was like two hours.
I was like, holy shit, 5,700 people were watching.
It's like if you were on a stage in front of 5,700 people, you'd be like, it'd be intimidating, you know, the echo that would be in the arena or whatever.
And it's like, there's no way, I can't believe that that many souls were, you know, participating.
That's how I, when I first got into YouTube, I came from, I mean, I've been doing music for a while and just live performance and stuff like that.
And you, I started doing videos and they would, I had a couple that would go viral.
And you see those numbers.
And then I would always compare it to like the Hollywood Bowl, which is 18,000 people, really big venue.
And you're like, man, like click refresh and like another 10,000 people watched your video.
You're like, man, like a whole other stadium of people just showed up and watched that.
Like, that's crazy to think about.
And then even now, like, I look at because I'll do my streams weekly.
And I have some, you know, we're just, it's not a huge stream yet.
Like, not a ton of folks come.
I have some great folks that are there every day that come to every stream, but it's not a huge, you know, stream yet to me, knowing streamers.
But then I take a step back and I'm like, hey, like, 200 people is like a full theater.
Like, that's actually, you know, if I was going to go lug my stuff to a place and play a show, I would hope to get, you know, two to 300 people.
And I can get that on Twitter.
But to me, it's a letdown.
Not actually, but you know, at first, you're like, oh, I only got 200 viewers.
But then when you take a step back coming from the live scene, you're like, 200 is great.
Like, that's, you know, 200 people, the door is amazing.
Like, that's, it's just crazy how social media and like viewing numbers specifically has changed kind of our inner or at least my uh inner overden window of how many people i expect to be at a show or whatever have you ever read that article uh 1000 true fans um i am familiar with the concept i don't know who wrote it though was it neil gaming i forget her name i i can't remember who wrote it i should know this but it's featured in i'm a big tem ferris fan uh and
it's featured in it's uh he basically just copied and pasted it in one of his books and um the same thing on his blog but the whole premise of the book is that if you have a thousand true fans then you can pretty much make it as a creator and by true fan it's like you know the people that buy everything you put out that watch every stream and you know when we think about streaming versus a live show the amount of effort that an audience has to put in to get in their car go out pay a cover fee sit in a room that maybe they're not familiar
with or haven't even been to before to watch you is is it's a higher level of commitment than like a stream too so um you know it's nice to have 5 700 people view you at one time in a live stream but if you're looking at like the true fan metric 200 people showing up in person is more powerful yeah it's absolutely true i mean patreon is a great example of you know you can kind of foster your community of people and it doesn't need to be a giant number you just need people that are dedicated to whatever it is whatever type of community you're trying to build for me it's
you know kind of a nightly unwind we just get on there and people do requests and we sing some songs and you know talk about if there's anything kind of light-hearted in the news i tried not to get too deeply political but get a lot of trolls that come in and you know which is it's again so interesting that i never had to deal with any of this stuff as a left-wing musician i wasn't even a left-wing musician i just you know kind of believed what i was told and then as soon as i kind of saw behind the behind the curtain a bit and realized like oh i guess i'm not a left-wing person at all i'm actually the exact opposite
but now it's completely uninvited i just get people coming at me i'm like throwing politics at me all the time which i'm grateful for because i'm learning how to uh kind of verbalize my positions and and speak about these things i'm just coming into the to the into my position on the right i was completely unequipped to have any discussion about stuff i just knew that i agreed with kind of the tenets of conservatism or libertarianism more than i agree with the left so at first trolls would come into my chats and
stuff like that and like start you know call me racist and i'd be like i'm not a racist you know that initial reaction we're like i have to tell everybody and then now i'm just like yeah you're right totally that's that's totally what it is everyone there's 81 million racists in in the country and you're the only one who caught it good job you figured it out yeah yeah i know it's wild so how did you um tell me a little bit if you don't mind talking about it about um what osperger's is and how you found out that you had it yeah sure um so it's a autism spectrum disorder it's
it's interesting it's changed uh classifications i think a bunch of times over the years and i think most recently um i think it doesn't exist anymore technically it's now everything is just kind of lumped in under autism spectrum disorder according to the dsm or whatever but um my mom took me to the doctor when i was four and uh they diagnosed me then but a diagnosis at that point in time this was in 1988 or 1989 um it was looked at as like a mental handicap so
they wanted to either institutionalize me or put me in um kind of handicap learning and fortunately i'd already begun my musical journey my mom put me in um violin lessons when i was like two and a half or three so and i was really excelling at that um at a kind of a
really really good level um so because she knew i wasn't uh mentally handicapped she didn't pursue the doctor's orders or whatever which i'm super grateful for because i think i would have been kind of put into a system of you know lower it would have totally totally changed your outcome yeah absolutely and instead of i'm gonna blank on uh you know Temple Grandin is a woman's name.
She's kind of revolutionized a lot of the conversation around Asperger's and stuff like that.
She's a scientist who's a little older, but she just kind of flipped everyone's thinking where as opposed to trying to focus on how to get people with neurodiversity to fit into like the normal box, why not engage them where they're at.
So for me, it's music.
So luckily for me, I was put into that music class.
And then because I excelled at that, I was able to use music to kind of backdoor my way into normal social interactions and stuff like that.
But I think the other path that was kind of being pushed in the 80s and 90s was who cares that they're good at music?
You need to get them good at this stuff.
And it's like, hey, if you try to pump you full of Riddle when you were a kid?
No.
Thank God.
I took a lot of Adderall as an adult.
And I no longer do because I don't think kids should be.
It seems crazy to me that it's not for kids.
That is an adult drug that is hard to use, responsible, even for the most responsible person.
And it's super effective.
Like, I'm grateful for having discovered it as an adult because I was able to actually use it.
I mean, sometimes for fun, but for the most part, it was I use as an actual work tool for going to the studio.
There was a time when I was working with like 15 different artists, and I would like a new Taylor Swift song would come out, and I would help maybe four or five of them cover the same song over the course of like two or three days.
And so I would have to do like four or five different productions from scratch of the same song that I don't like.
So need a little bit of a kick.
Yeah, it would really help me just to focus.
And I don't know that I haven't been diagnosed with ADHD or ADD or anything, but I may be in that ballpark too.
Who knows?
But either way, I had a misconception about Ospergers that it was, maybe I'm just way off bass, but I thought there was like a thing where it was like kids that don't like to be, don't like to be touched or a kind of a verse to like embrace.
A lot of fabrics that I don't like.
Yeah, that's sensory processing disorders is kind of the term for it.
So it's all mendies for you?
I love meandies, yeah, actually.
Really soft blankets, meandies.
What else do I really certain smells like?
We'll just, if I walk into like a, a lot of chemically smells in general, will just, I'm out, like I, I got to leave.
And like if I walk into a mall sometimes, which malls for me are the worst because it's just like you got a baby store, like pushing out their smell, and then Hollister pushes out their smell, and then Dillard's has their smell.
And, you know, just, it's just so much.
The blessing of that is that I do have heightened kind of sensual awareness.
So it's really good for mixing, for critical listening, for mastering for production.
Just everything in the music world, it helps me.
But, you know, the downfall is that I can kind of be 37 now, so I don't really get like triggered anymore and have meltdowns.
But as a kid, you don't really know how to process your words or your feelings.
So a lot of the Asperger's kids do have meltdowns and stuff like that.
Did you have a meltdown when you were 18?
When I was 18.
I probably had.
I think by then I had learned to mask it with one of the main reasons I think that drinking is so appealing to me and drug use in general was kind of numbing these sensual sensory processing disorders because everything is just so overwhelming all the time.
Drinking just kind of numbs that and self-medicating.
Yeah.
But I think by 18 I had probably stopped.
And for me, I don't have, I've never been like a tantrum meltdown.
I'm more of an implode.
So it's kind of like inside where I just shut down and I'll go like lock myself in my room for three or four days and just like veg out and do nothing and talk to nobody.
I don't do that anymore.
Obviously I can almost time it.
I have I have a meltdown about every four years.
Okay.
There's I don't have I mean I'm not saying I don't have Asperger's so I'm not trying to compare my why I have meltdowns.
There's a lot of similarities between between the two.
Yeah.
So I am this camera overheats.
I need to figure out the settings for this, but I figured out that I like bottle anger.
Okay.
Because whenever I have a meltdown, it's always like a really small thing.
So there's like a there's a Charles Bukowski poem.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with Charles Bukowski.
He's my favorite.
And he's got a poem and I'm just paraphrasing.
So the gist of it is it's not the big things that drive a man crazy.
It's a it's a snapping shoelace.
So it'll be like, I remember the last time I had a meltdown was probably maybe the second to last time I had a meltdown was in college.
I did really well my freshman year and I was able to transfer into the honors program.
Okay.
Right.
And I would never have gotten into the honors program at college straight out of high school because my grades were so bad in high school, but I did so well.
And I was so excited and nervous about it because I was like, all right, this is your chance to, you know, excel with the smarter, smarter kids, the tougher classes.
This is like, this is your opportunity to prove to yourself that, you know, you were always a smart kid, despite the fact that in high school, you know, you're treated like irresponsible, like you were irresponsible.
And we had our first paper due at noon via email, like on the first day of classes.
And it's like five till noon.
I finish up the paper, like, you know, really cutting it close.
And I go to send it and the internet is down in the dorm.
And I'm like, if I turn this in late, am I going to get docked?
You know, and like, I'm just nervous, like totally irrationally nervous about it.
It's not that big of a deal.
But I just remember snapping like $50,000 a year in tuition.
Goddamn internet as a world.
Like the door lights run.
And it's just like, you know, and it's like the snapping shoelace.
It wasn't a big deal.
But then something terrible could happen.
Like, I don't know.
I could, I had a major breakup.
I was, I had a fiancé when I was in college.
You know, we could get married.
I had a major breakup and frankly unfazed.
But when the internet didn't work, it was like, oh.
That's the blessing of it.
And people get, there's really positive, it's a really positive trait, I think, to be stoic in times of kind of, you know, major duress for your friends or whatever's going on.
I've been through quite a few of those scenarios where, especially as a performer, even like just on a kind of a low stakes, low stakes scenario, but like when something breaks on stage or whatever, you know, you just got to kind of go with the flow.
It's super helpful though because I'm just unfazed by most things.
But same thing, the snapping of a shoelace.
The only difference is for me, rather than go big with it, I would have probably dropped out of college and locked myself in the room.
You know, like it's a, it's more of an internal, like, oh, I don't deserve to be here.
I'm, you know, and I go to that place as opposed, but I, but I fully, you know, understand the blow up because I'm having that blow up in my brain and I'm destroying my life, you know, in a certain way also by leaving or whatever the scenario is, like I'm, I'm fleeing it as opposed to, you know, fighting it.
But it's, it's, you know, which neither one's better or worse.
It's just implosion versus explosion.
That's one of the things that Ayn Rand really helped me with, actually.
I need to read more Ayn Rand.
I'm a Bukowski fan.
I haven't read much Ayn Rand, though.
So if I were you, I would recommend just reading The Fountainhead.
And if you don't have the time to read 800 pages in fine print, you can watch the 1946 or 1949 movie with Gary Cooper.
She wrote the screenplay.
So it is not a Hollywood butchering of the book.
It's obviously edited because the book was so big, but you can watch that and get the gist.
But the reason I wanted to mention that is because you were kind of talking about imploding and sort of like self-sabotaging when something bad happens.
Absolutely.
That book convinced ever since I read that book.
I finished it when I was 17.
I do not talk shit to myself.
And I think that people underestimate the amount of derogatory remarks they make in their own head to themselves.
Absolutely.
And a lot of our problems would be solved if people just didn't talk shit to themselves.
Treat yourself like a friend as opposed to a foe.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I don't know.
I just think.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
You go ahead, man.
Your turn.
I was going to say, you see, I can see it now with people when I watch, you know, just in any kind of casual conversation.
I'm overly analytical armchair psychologist, but just from doing my own research on my own brain and the Asperger's brain and different ADHD brains, just different types of neurodiversity, neurodivergent brains.
I see kind of the roadblocks, not that I can necessarily help people get past them, but I'm aware of them just from reading and stuff.
And it's crazy how that's one of the biggest ones is just people don't even realize how much they tell themselves they can't do things all day.
And it's just from little things, even if it's, you know, whatever, doing your laundry, there's all sorts of little roadblocks we have in our heads of, oh, I can't do this because I'm not good enough.
And it's not even like as big of a bully as it sounds, like, oh, you're not good enough.
It's just really small little things and they kind of add up and they prevent you from kind of achieving full potential or even, you know, 50% potential for some folks.
But I think that's, I was listening to, like I said, your speech or your podcast yesterday with Tim Young, and you guys are talking about how, you know, mental illness is stigmatized.
And I think that's one of the biggest things we should get past is, You know, helping people get past these roadblocks and just kind of just defeating that inner monologue of failure that we all kind of have, because it does seem to be a common thread amongst all people.
And something you see on Tim Ferriss's, you know, he always does a great job of kind of getting to what would be the word, kind of the principles that link a lot of successful people together.
Yeah.
He words it a certain way, but common denominators.
Exactly.
Thank you.
Common denominators amongst successful people.
And one of them is that they've defeated that roadblock.
And I think it's a universal thing.
Like everybody I know has it.
The most successful people I know, it's not like they don't have it.
They just have found a way to work past it.
And it doesn't work for everybody the same way.
Like you need to find your own kind of, you know, neural pathway through your demons or your, whatever you want to call that voice in your head.
But for me, I'm able to get past some of them and prevent, you know, most of my kind of go melancholy cry in the corner type stuff that I used to do when I was younger.
But I mean, that's the thing with the demons are always finding new ways to kind of pop up in your head and new evil will always find its way to lurk and get to you.
So do you think that it comes?
Do you think that it comes from like our deep rooted, our deep roots with Judeo-Christian sort of zeitgeists and that like you know right in the beginning of the Bible and regardless of whether or not you're Christian, you're still, if you're living a Western civilization, you're heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian values, right?
Consciously, subconsciously, whatever.
So do you think that, you know, right in the beginning of the Bible, you have the fall of man and it's just establishes like you are inherently flawed because of original sin.
Do you think that that maybe has played a part in how human beings for the last centuries have perceived themselves?
Because the Enlightenment kind of happened in conjunction with a transition from a supernatural perspective on religion to a pragmatic one.
Yeah.
You know, like if you look at the Jefferson Bible, for example, he kept all of all of Jesus's speak, all of his words in the Bible, but he cut out all of the miracles and supernatural stuff.
I don't know if you've ever heard of that, but he did that.
No, that's yeah.
And that was sort of an Enlightenment era type thing to do where it's like, all right, you know, what does what does this mean regardless of whether or not it's true?
And I think that it's possible, this is just me speculating that some of the great things that people were able to accomplish during the Enlightenment were out of like some sort of threshold was crossed where people were able to think independently and critically in a way that sort of shielded them from the subconscious impacts of, I don't know, dogma.
Not to be pedantic, but I don't know.
I just, I wonder, I often wonder about the long-term effects of my personal kind of journey with God and Christ and just religion in general.
I grew up in like an Irish Italian Catholic family, but we weren't, you know, it wasn't a big part of our lives.
And then I, as I became, you know, kind of more aware of stuff, I, I think, made the mistake that a lot of people do, which is where I thought I outsmarted God, right?
Or outsmarted religion.
Like I had these, oh, no, it's not like that.
You can't, you know, just these kind of condescending views of religion where it's like, oh, you guys really think you did wine into water, you know, all this, all these things.
And which looking back, I now realize those are like the most juvenile atheistic arguments that exist.
I think there are some, I personally do believe in God and Christ, but I do think there are, there are at least atheist arguments that are good arguments.
I don't agree with them, but at least they hold water to some degree.
But the arguments that I was making when I was 14 to 25 were just like, oh, have you guys ever thought, oh, yeah, we're just a speck of space dust.
You don't even know.
And like, you just, there's this, this condescending atheist that exists or existed inside of me that was like, sure, probably wrong, very wrong.
And then, but to go back to what you're saying about the Jefferson Bible, I do think that pragmatic approach without the miracles, while it's not great for everybody, I think that actually is helpful for some folks.
For me personally, like I, being that kind of condescending atheist or agnostic at that time, it was, there was no chance that I was going to just start believing in miracles unless I saw one, which I think some people have done and claim to have done.
And, you know, that's, that's great if that's something that does happen in your life.
But for me, and my kind of brain type in general, like, I, I wasn't going to ever believe in Christianity or God through that path.
So taking a more pragmatic approach, I forget the name of the pastor that I, or it could have been a philosopher, whatever, somebody kind of broke down some of the miracles for me.
And I'm not saying this is necessarily correct, but like one example was they said, oh, well, when you take, you know, Jesus turning water into wine, maybe think of it as he was the life of the party.
He could go to a party that had only water at it, and then he would turn it to wine and turn everybody into a happy.
you know, kind of under the wine influence version of themselves.
Everyone becomes this beautiful, happy, wind out, you know, you know, person.
And that, again, I'm not necessarily saying I believe that's the case with the miracle.
Right, but it could be a metaphor.
It doesn't have to be historical to be true.
And that's, that, that opened the part of my brain that made me realize, like, oh, I've just been this condescending idiot for so long, like thinking that I've outsmarted, you know, texts that are thousands and thousands of years old, like as if nobody's ever had these ideas that I've had before.
But I do like that pragmatic approach to Christianity and to God in general and being able to look at the miracles on a completely just logical level.
And then also that I think for me, that allows me to open up the spiritual level and open up the emotional level, you know, the other layers, peel back the other layers of the miracles and kind of the more challenging parts of the Bible too that were for me challenging to accept.
And I'm by no means an expert in any of this stuff.
Like I said, it's been a long road to God for me.
I didn't even, I think I would have called myself agnostic until 33 and I'm 37 now.
So it's only been recent, which I know you had Ron Coleman on recently and I was listening to a podcast of his with I'm going to butcher his name, Sarar Salal.
I think Salal is his name.
But it was, I should look it up to be respectful, not a name drop.
Yeah, show some respect.
Yeah.
Jeez.
Go on the clock.
Are you on the spectrum or something?
Jesus.
Right?
Sarab.
Sarab Amari.
But Ron was having a conversation with Sarab, and they were talking about how it's a completely different path to kind of come to God or a religion in your later years because it's an actual informed choice as opposed to some folks who have the blessing of being born into a family and just having faith their whole life, which I've had some of those friends throughout the years.
And I wouldn't say that I was jealous in the moment, you know, when I wasn't a Christian or when I wasn't a believer.
But looking back now, I'm like, man, you've just had faith your whole life.
That's pretty amazing to me that people are born into families that have faith and then just stick with it and they never waver.
And that's amazing.
And, you know, I don't think one's necessarily better or worse.
It's interesting.
But I always like to look at kind of the other perspectives of things.
And that's one that's kind of dawned on me recently.
It's like, man, like some folks just really, it's not even something they have to worry about.
Kind of like some folks are just born into billions of dollars.
Money is just never something they worry about or have to waver with.
It's just, I do what makes the world better.
I make the, or whatever makes me have fun.
Like, that's what they focus on.
It's the same thing with people with faith.
They're born into great faith.
They never waver in it and they live their life that way.
And it's impressive.
As I've gotten older, I now really respect that in people.
Whereas when I was younger, I just, I think I thought it was dumb.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think that one of the problems, one of the problems with faith, just generally speaking, is that people naturally kind of come to it out of a concern for what's going to happen in the afterlife.
I think people are distracted by that and kind of miss the point.
So, you know, there's all sorts of different brands of Christianity, so you can't really speak of it in one lump sum.
I mean, to be Catholic is completely different than to be Baptist, but you have a lot of people that are deeply afraid of going to hell for all eternity when they die.
And they believe that hell is a physical place where there's just constant burning and torture and anguish forever.
And when you're coming from a place of fear like that, I think that psychologically you might take shortcuts in order to do or believe whatever seems necessary to avoid that outcome.
And to me, my sort of pivotal moment, and hopefully I have more pivotal moments because I probably haven't landed on the right spot, but my sort of pivotal moment was when I was like, all right, let's just, let's just think about this for a second.
Like nobody really knows what happens in the afterlife.
And chances are it's fine, whatever it is.
That's kind of, you just like from an intuitive, like, yeah, all right, you know, what's really going on?
And then, and then from once I reached that point, I was like, all right, let's say, you know, if hell is real and God is good and I got it wrong during my life in terms of what I believed or lived to, what are the odds that I go up to the pearly gates and I'm like, ooh, sorry, a misinterpretation, you know, and he's like, too bad, button, you know.
I'm like, yeah, it's probably not going to play like that, you know, if that's the case.
So I just sort of totally took all the fear of hell away from me.
And now I've kind of come to the conclusion where people are like, oh, do you think that Jesus Christ literally came back from the dead or not?
And my response is, I don't think it matters.
I think that, you know, maybe you can be a Christian and not have come to a conclusion on that specific thing, that miracle.
And maybe it's a metaphor.
And maybe when it says that Christ is the body, you know, we are the body of Christ, it's explaining that the resurrection is actually in us.
And by living like Christ, Christ is back from the dead.
Right.
So maybe that's it.
I don't know if that's true or not, but the point I'm trying to make is you can get more out of the text and the faith if you're not just there to avoid punishment.
Yeah.
And those layers of the conversation and whether it's an actual conversation or an internal conversation, I think are significantly more impactful and important than whether or not Christ came back or, you know, in a physical form or whether or not hell as a location is real.
Like whether or not you believe those specific things, I'm not saying those aren't important details, but that to me, as far as a conversational level and bettering myself and bettering humanity, doing what I can to make humanity better and make the world a better place for people, like believing those things isn't a make or break between you and I or between me and somebody else versus are they willing to accept that Judeo-Christian values make a better society.
Like that's the more important part to me.
If we agree on that, I think that's good.
I don't think we need to agree on whether or not hell is what it looks like there.
If it's a, you know, if it's a motel and Pooke or if it's a, you know, whatever, like hell can be a place inside of us.
I've heard.
Orange County.
Yeah, exactly.
I've heard some compelling arguments in so many different directions about whether or not hell is an actual physical location or if hell is kind of a state of mind that you put yourself in by sinning.
And that, again, coming from a pragmatic viewpoint, like that, that made more sense to me at first.
And I think that's where I'm kind of at right now on my journey.
But I'm open to, I've been wrong so many times already in my life that I'm open to being wrong right now.
Maybe hell is a physical location.
To me, what makes the most sense is that it's more of a position that you put yourself in by breaking commandments or by sinning or whatever, whatever.
Whatever.
That's where I am too.
But I kind of, one thing that I miss, one thing I miss about where I was psychologically when I had a more literal interpretation of the Bible and faith in it is when you believe that Jesus Christ literally came back from the dead with certainty, it does allow you to have this tremendous sense that you have a relationship with God.
And one thing I've noticed in my faith is that since I've sort of transitioned gradually to a more philosophical interpretation and perspective on the text, I totally believe in God.
That's not the problem, but God seems very vacant.
Okay.
You know, and I don't know, well, I think of God as this sort of transcendent creator of the universe.
But since I'm agnostic as to some of the details about God, it's hard for me to, you know, like there were times when there was a time in my life 15 years ago where I could pray for 15 minutes and have goosebumps like I was listening to a symphony, right?
And that you feel like you have the hand of God on you and supporting you.
And now that I've sort of transitioned away from, like I said, those confidence in the literal details of the nature of God, it's hard for me to feel like I have a relationship with God because I am very agnostic as to the nature of God.
Like people ask me if I believe a guy, I say, absolutely.
I just don't know anything about him.
I don't come, like, I don't think I prayed until I was 35.
I mean, I think I did some, I went to a Catholic elementary school on and off a few years.
So I did some prayers, but I mean, I wouldn't call it praying because I was just doing what I was told by my teachers.
It wasn't, you know, from a spiritual place.
I didn't believe in it.
It was just, this is what I have to do to get through this day type thinking.
But I could absolutely see from your perspective, if I had come through and already kind of experienced that level of connection, you know, you want your journey to continue.
So you need to continue down your personal path with God.
If that for you is now in a place where it's less about those chill bumps and kind of more about embracing God as a totality and seeing God and everything or, you know, whatever.
For me, kind of to give you a different side of that coin, I came from almost like a, I think everybody says they're Buddhist when they're when they're agnostic just because it sounds neat, but like I had like an Eastern kind of leaning.
Yeah.
And I would see God in kind of everything.
And that was what opened me up to accepting, you know, God in other forms.
So I'm grateful that I went through that kind of phase of my life.
But having, I've never had those moments where I still to this day, I've never prayed and felt kind of overwhelmed by anything.
I still pray, you know, as often as I can.
But I don't, I've never felt that one-on-one kind of close personal connection.
I'm striving for it.
But I have felt a connection to the universe, which I logically can say to myself, oh, the universe is God because it's everything.
And I can make that correlation.
So I have felt that type of feeling, that type of connection to everything before, to oneness or whatever you want to call it, which I can now logically tell myself, oh, that was a connection to God, but it never came from me specifically talking to one channel.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
I miss that.
And like, I know you said that you never had it, so you can't really miss it, but it's an incredibly reassuring feeling.
Like, you know, if you feel, if you, if you genuinely believe that the creator of the universe is listening to you and wants the best for you, it's very comforting.
And people don't.
And like I said, I still consider myself a Christian and I still believe in God.
But I'm just, I don't know.
I just don't know anything about him.
And that's, and that's, that's a fair approach.
I think that's too many folks are in the same boat, but they take the other route where they say, where they try to kind of puff out their chest and be like, no, I know, I know, it's like this.
And that, that's what, and I've been that person before on the opposite side where I'm like, oh, no, God doesn't, it's like this.
It's, there's no, what do you really think?
It's we're all on a spaceship on the back of an alien fingernail or something, you know, those kind of thoughts.
So it's, it's good and humble of you and honest of you to to say it that way as opposed to taking the alternative route, which would be to kind of, you know, solidify some kind of stance that you, that, that none of us could back up.
Yeah.
Like a flat earther would do, honestly.
I mean, if we're being honest.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
So it's a crazy journey.
I don't, you know, I should probably spend more time thinking about it, but I really, really have appreciated Jordan Peterson's series on the Bible.
I don't know if you follow Jordan Peterson at all.
I do.
Yeah.
I haven't listened to much recently, but I've read the 12 Rules for Life.
And he did a biblical series years ago where he did lectures on different stories from the Old Testament and what they really mean based on like archetypes.
And it's absolutely fascinating.
It's very appealing on an intellectual level, but it's hard.
As human beings, we need more than just understanding.
Sure.
You know, it's like part of the human condition.
We need just knowing the truth isn't enough.
You know, so you can go through, if you go through the Bible and you make the best arguments for every interpretation of every story, you could still be left with a void.
And I don't know the answer.
And I don't mean to just talk in circles, but I think this is, like I said, the human condition is always getting closer, but never arriving.
Yeah.
And that's, I guess, where faith takes over.
And, you know, and that's for me, like where I'm kind of at coming from the other side of it is now where I'm just like, oh, well, I know, I know what I lacked before was faith.
I had none.
I had no faith.
But I had this kind of intuition inside of me that was like, oh, the universe is all connected.
Everything is one.
We're these beautiful, amazing bodies that have been, like, I was kind of building the argument for Christianity on my own, which I think, again, comes from our ego and our nonsense.
I couldn't accept God as it was told to me.
I had to build it myself.
And then the funny part is you get to the end, you're like, oh, all I did was write down what Christians have been saying the whole time or what Catholic, you know, what religious, I shouldn't necessarily specifically say one religion, but religious folks in general kind of have certain common denominators that connect them all together.
And I was just essentially building that same thing and then trying to take credit for it myself.
When in reality, I could have, if I would have been blessed with faith from, you know, an earlier age, I could have just taken other people's words for it.
But I think that over time, that's what kind of reinforces the good values is us being allowed to the freedom.
And that's why God gives us free will is to allow us the freedom to kind of stray and then come back and be like, oh, I actually do believe this because I went and saw the other side.
And I was like, oh, that definitely wasn't the answer.
So let me come back to this.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Did you specifically go to Belmont because it was a Christian school or were you doing it because the music program is amazing?
Yeah, I thought I wanted to be a producer.
And so my thinking was if I want to be a producer, I should study at a university in a music town.
And I didn't want to live in LA and I didn't want to live in New York.
And so Nashville was a good option.
And so, yeah, I looked into Belmont.
It has a really good music business program and a really good audio engineering program.
And I went.
And while I was there, I decided that I didn't want to be an audio engineer professionally.
But I didn't change majors.
I graduated and I got the degree and had a great experience.
I love being in the studio, but it's just a very difficult.
What I tell people is you can make it in the music business, but you have to be unwilling to do anything else.
It's true.
Yeah.
You know, there's other things I'm interested in that I'd be happy to do.
So I wasn't going to make it as a big producer if I didn't, you have to have that zeal.
It's such a commitment.
I struggle with that personally, and especially now with this, like I was saying with my wife and my child and stuff, and just kind of getting older and having more time to actually reflect on my own desires, like what I want out of life and where I want to be in 10 years and stuff like that.
And when I first started making music, it was as a lifeline.
Like, you know, when I was like two or three, it was my only way to kind of communicate with people.
And kind of that turned into when I was in my teens, like my only way to kind of get out of Ohio and pursue my own, you know, life or whatever was all through music.
And I'm grateful for all that.
And I was able to make a living out of it, which I'm grateful for.
But now that I've kind of reflected on like having a family and what I want for my children, like I don't, I don't want to tour, which is so streaming is a great option for me.
Like I love doing this and I love producing my own little studio and I do all my recordings at home.
So I love that.
I love being able to work from home.
But if the opportunity came up tomorrow for me to go do a, you know, a supporting act tour for six months for one of my favorite artists, like I would turn it down.
And I know that's not the right thing to say if you want to succeed in the music industry.
But I'd rather carve up my own path and like kind of, if it's, if it involves music as a halftime thing and then doing other, you know, online things that I enjoy.
Like I found other things that I enjoy where I guess my point is at first it was only music.
That was all I could, which was super beneficial because like you said, it has to be everything to you.
And then as I've gotten older, I found other things.
And now I'm kind of like, oh, I don't, I'm not going to go do that.
And I've done some tours and stuff like that.
Like, it's not like I haven't experienced that stuff.
I just, I've never enjoyed being away from home.
I've never enjoyed the new town everyday type thing.
I know, like, I read a lot of books from, you know, older musicians and stuff.
Like Duff McKagan has a book and some of the guys from Guns N' Rose and stuff.
They all write books about like, you know, these great, crazy stories and stuff on the road.
And when I was younger, I was like, yeah, that sounds awesome.
And now I'm just like, I have no desire to do that.
I would much rather be a mixing engineer from home and like work on other people's records or, you know, do production or do streams, like whatever I can do from my own studio and kind of build my area as a musical destination as opposed to having to go play places, which is, I love that about Nashville.
Like there's an actual live scene here where if I wanted to go perform, you know, four or five nights a week at different places and do that, I could do that.
And if you make the right friends, you can just hop on stage for one song if you want.
Yeah, it's silly.
People don't understand how cool the culture is in Nashville.
Everybody on the Broadway Strip, they're so connected.
And they'll do their wagon wheel covers at the bars and then they'll do a real house party after, you know, where they play their originals.
And it's just such a cool scene.
And if you get entrenched there, they'll let you come up and sing any song you want.
And it's just, it's an awesome culture.
I love it.
Yeah.
My first time here, I think I was here for like three hours.
And then after three hours, I was like, I need to live here.
And it took me a few years to get out here.
But just in that moment, as soon as I saw, it was everything that I coming from Ohio, I moved to Los Angeles thinking it was going to be this musical haven.
And it wasn't.
I mean, when I got there, I think in the 80s, maybe it was a little different.
You know, I wasn't here for that.
When I got there in like 2004, it, you know, it's just glitz and glamour and it's fake.
It's super fake.
Everyone, everything's run by the acting industry, which is all just a different world.
And it kind of bummed me out.
And I never knew about Nashville or Austin or New Orleans.
You know, there's other cities that have what I was looking for, but I ended up in LA, which I'm grateful for.
I'm glad, you know, it's a good experience to try to make it as an adult in California.
It's tough.
It's a learning.
And it's completely unique.
I think as a city, like there's it's crazy.
But coming back to Nashville and seeing it, I was like, oh my God, this is what I wanted 15 years ago.
This is what I was looking for.
I didn't get out there and see actual musicians going and doing gigs, doing three or four gigs a day, then heading over to the studio and like actually, you know, getting better at their craft and like writing songs together, like the publishing houses and stuff like that.
That whole scene is just so cool to me.
And that's where I think, you know, I want to spend the back half of my life, you know, out here doing that type of stuff.
Mostly for the reason that you can be an actual musician and have to leave the leave the state.
I mean, California, kind of the main, the only gig you can really get is being a touring musician with either yourself as an artist or with another artist or something like that.
And like that just has never been something that I've wanted to strive for.
And I don't think you could pay me enough to leave my family.
Like, it just isn't something that I'm into.
But out here in Nashville, you can actually build a name for yourself and get work going places, which is just awesome.
And as far as monetization is concerned, obviously there were a lot of huge changes in the music business as a result of Napster, basically, and streaming.
So the model completely changed from record sales to 360 deals and then 360 deals.
Really, you only work out for like 5% of the acts that are even signed.
And so a lot of musicians have gone the indie route and successfully.
Would you say that the best route to monetization for an artist is sort of like this monetizing YouTube channels, sort of bootstrap, Patreon?
That kind of is that just is that the ticket now?
I would, yeah.
I mean, that's, in my opinion, like pretty much every, all a record deal is a predatory bank loan.
It's, it's, they specifically look for people who are going to take a bad deal, um, which, you know, I don't think that's ever a good option.
I know some people come from, you know, circumstances where they need to do that, it seems, um, because they don't have any other way, or at least that's what they think.
But yeah, I mean, if I, when I advise people or just to converse with people, like I think you can do so much on your own.
I mean, even with your iPhone now, or whatever phone you have, you can like record something and you can put that on a SoundCloud page and you can, you know, get viewers and then you can crowdsource whatever 500 bucks to get into a studio to do something.
Like you can, you can get there on your own.
You can make a pro record at home.
Yeah, or at least with a friend, like you can, you can find somebody in your town who can do it.
Or I mean, you could go on Sound Better and like, you know, find somebody for there's so much access now.
And there's so many revenue streams that exist that, and it's a lot of work to, you know, find all the new ones and sort through which ones are going to work and which ones don't.
But I mean, I've had the blessing of being Indian pretty much my whole life or whatever, last 15, 12, 14 years, something like that.
But just owning all those revenue streams and being able to actually work for yourself for me has always been better.
I think, and I've seen a lot of my friends over the years get signed and then nothing.
And that is a career killer.
Like in for 99% of the people that it happens to.
And the crazy part to me is that they strive for it.
Like they'll move out from wherever they're at.
Like, I'm going to go to Los Angeles.
I'm going to get a record deal.
That's my goal.
And then they get there and they get the record deal.
And of course, nothing happens because if that's your goal, you've already achieved your goal.
You're done.
Like the people that end up succeeding in that system, which don't get it twisted, I'm not like one of those jaded folks who's like, it doesn't work.
It definitely works.
Yeah, but it's the people that would have made it.
It's the people that would have made it anyway.
Like the record companies.
It's like the folks are bigger than life, too.
Like I have no desire to be huge, like Katy Perry or Bieber.
Like, I don't have that in me.
I've never, I love playing to like theater-sized crowds, you know, 500 to 700 seat rooms, maybe a thousand seat rooms.
Like that's cool with me.
I don't really want to do like a stadium.
I wouldn't, you know, it doesn't doesn't seem exciting to me.
And I, I don't, um, when I write and when I perform and stuff, like, I don't put together a show in my head that is of that caliber.
Like, I'm, I love Damian Rice.
I love Ed Sheeran, like a lot of the acoustic guys and stuff.
And I don't think in kind of those terms of like, let's do a giant production and like do it.
And like, I know there's guys that do, like, Nikki Six is a good example.
Like he, you know, when he was like 16, had the vision in his head of like, oh, we have to have huge hair because when people are 50 or 500 feet away or 1,000 feet away, they have to be able to see the hair and like this whole genius.
Yeah.
And like, and I totally respect that.
And if I had that type of vision for myself or whatever, I would probably have a different opinion about, you know, kind of major labels and that stuff because I think you do kind of need them to get to that level.
But I think as a, if you want to be a musician and a songwriter and stuff, you don't.
you know, necessarily need that.
And I think those things will present themselves.
Those types of deals will present themselves if you do need them.
But I think more importantly is kind of monetizing on your own, building the ability to be a free creative, whether that's the Thousand True Fans method or whatever it is to get your kind of basic bills paid to allow you the freedom to be creative and to pursue other things.
And maybe that, you know, that next layer of the giant stadium show or whatever, you know, maybe that for some people pops later in life or whatever.
But for me, I've always just kind of been like wanting to make good sounding records.
And I love doing it on my own because I thoroughly enjoy sound design.
I thoroughly enjoy mixing, like I said, with the sensory disorders and stuff like that.
I just love fixing things so they sound perfect in my opinion, which, you know, it's always subjective.
But to me, like, I'm like, man, if I could just add this one little bell sound, it would be like a happy little thing.
And then there's the low end going.
And I just, you know, it gets me excited.
And like, I don't get that excitement from the major label side of music.
And I know there's people that do.
I used to kind of be on the other bitterish side of it.
Not that I was bitter, but it sounds bitter to be like, oh, I don't want to be like that.
And I didn't, I couldn't really vocalize why I didn't want to be like that, which sounds a lot like just being jaded or like, oh, I would never want to be Katy Perry.
And it's like, why wouldn't you want to be Katy Perry?
Oh, well, here's why, because I actually enjoy this other side of music way more.
And I love the feeling of, you know, there's a venue in California called Hotel Cafe that is great.
There's just these kind of smaller intimate venues where you can really make magic happen as an artist.
And those moments, in my opinion, don't really exist in kind of the big pop stadium type shows.
There's other moments that exist, you know, where the fireworks blow up over Bon Jovi's head and he sings the right note.
And it's like, you know, that's a different type of moment.
But for me, the moments that I can visualize, which I think visualization is so important, the things that I can visualize are kind of these more intimate moments and stuff like that.
So I've always just kind of built myself and built my records around kind of smaller sounds and like acoustic instruments.
And I love analog gear and that type of stuff.
You got an LA2A at the house?
I have the warm audio version, actually.
Have you used any of the warm gear?
I haven't used any gear for almost 10 years.
Well, seven years.
But I just love the LA2A that they had at RTAB.
I mean, it was perfect.
I got to play drums for like two seconds at Ocean Way going through just all the gear in that room.
It's like, you know, the church, the old church.
Yeah, it's amazing.
We did in between sessions, they were nice enough to let the film crew do a couple of videos for me and my buddies that were there.
And the biggest takeaway for me was hearing my voice, like hearing everything through that gear, which I just don't have the chance to do without big budgets.
But that room, you just can't, you can't really simulate that room.
I know they have actual plugins to simulate that specific room, but they just don't.
Yeah, they're not there yet, but they'll get there.
Yeah, it's crazy.
I'm a big believer in the ability of technology to trick analog.
But I understand that it's not there yet in a lot of cases.
So don't get me wrong.
I have a deep appreciation for analog, but I think that I think that you can get a, and this is blasphemy to say, right?
But I think you can get a better sound out of all digital.
Like I look at some of like the, especially in the, obviously the pop world, it's just like some of the sounds that some of those producer kids get.
Like I'm a big fan of like Maddion.
You know the kid?
He's up in France.
Just some like electronic artists that they're a little younger, closer to like probably 20 to 24 range, but they've grown up in the headspace of they're kind of the first generation to grow up in the headspace of having logic or having these kind of accessible DAWs.
And to see what they've done with the digital side, it sounds bigger and better than kind of anything analog ever will.
And I don't mean that like better is a bad word because, you know, we need to compare them, but to be able to achieve that level of sonic quality where every single frequency in the spectrum is touched as opposed to, you know, the way you do it in analog is you get the hiss, right?
You put the high-end hiss on something or some low-end, you know, boominess and like you can kind of build a wall of sound.
The kids that are making wall of sounds on purpose, specifically inside of an electronic DAW without any analog gear, like that stuff, when you put it in big speakers like EDC or Coachella or whatever, like it just hits it a different way that I don't think anything analog will ever be able to do as much as Dave Groll wishes it would if he sits in the garage and makes it well.
And the thing is, it's not that analog or digital are better or worse, it's just a different sound.
Yeah.
So like you can't just knock the digital stuff because it's digital.
I mean, does it sound good?
You can't knock the analog stuff because it's old school if it sounds good.
It's silly.
Folks get so caught up in that.
And I, and, and to, to, you know, to give credit to analog, like, I, for my personal stuff that I like to make, like I said, I like to use acoustic instruments and small, a small sound and then amplify to make it big.
So I need analog gear.
So obviously the grass is always greener, right?
So I'm always, I always wish I could put like, you know, these giant kick drums and like these huge digital sounds because I open up Omnisphere or whatever, you know, whatever plugin I'm using.
I'm just like, how can I use this in one of my songs?
And then I listen and like, you know, I'm just the acoustic country guy and I'm like, I can't really do it, but it's fine.
Well, you should make a dancer.
You should make an electronic dance record.
I do have one song I put out.
I have a, I've been doing experiments over the years just on Spotify and stuff.
I have a pop punk band that I released that's just me, but you know, whatever.
But then I did a DJ name, M3 Music Makes Me.
So Music Makes Me M3 is the name.
But I did like a dubstep song and it's not good by any means.
So but it's but it's uh it was fun to do.
It got me to uh you know kind of explore that side of my brain, which is good.
That's awesome, man.
Well, thanks so much for coming on.
I really enjoyed our conversation.
We've gone all over the map.
It's awesome to finally interact with you.
Yeah, that's cool.
Where can people find you?
If you go to keepyoursoul.co, keepyoursoul.co, there's it's just a link tree with all my different stuff.
Or on Twitter, I'm at Jayco.
Pretty much anywhere, I'm at Jayco.
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much for coming on.
Let's stay in touch.
Yeah.
And good luck to everything that you're working on.
Thanks, brother.
I appreciate it.
Take care.
Absolutely.
I solemnly ask of every man who hears this case to let his own mind pronounce a verdict upon it.
