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March 13, 2023 - Doug Collins Podcast
43:11
The Memories that last a lifetime: Conversation with Newsmax John Bachman
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Do you want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
This house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Doug Collins Podcast.
New week, new ready to go.
Gonna be a great week, got lots of things going on today.
Just a few minutes, you're gonna hear from the one, the only, John Botman, Newsmax Botman.
Now on Newsmax, hear him every day from 12 to two.
I wanna check that out.
John's a good friend of the show, been on with him.
Before coming back, we're gonna talk, today you're gonna talk about a lot about Georgia, gonna talk about a lot about Georgia music.
In fact, this whole podcast episode came up when he had heard one of our episodes that we were discussing, some movies and stuff, and he wanted to come on and talk about Georgia stuff.
So John and I are going to have a good time here in just a few minutes.
Also, we've got Aaron Barker coming on, one of our songwriters coming on this week.
Aaron wrote songs such as Baby Blue.
He wrote Love Without End, Amen, George Strait, Number One's Easy Come, Easy Go, George Strait.
I'd like to have that one back.
I mean, just, you know, song after song.
I can still make Cheyenne one of my favorite all-time songs.
A great song.
We're going to talk about that with him.
A lot for Clay Walker, Aaron Tippin.
I mean, just a lot of stuff that you would recognize and just give us that insight.
Great time, as always, when we have our songwriters on this week.
Of course, later next week.
Later this week, of course, James and I will be back with Friday's Finest.
A lot of things coming up.
Just some also exciting news coming up.
Rob Carson's going to be on with us in the coming weeks.
We've got Michael Waddell's hopefully going to be back on with us.
A lot going on with Doug Collins Podcast.
So, look, as they say, you miss one, you miss a lot.
But you know what?
You can always find it on the DougCollinsPodcast.com.
DougCollinsPodcast.com.
You can subscribe there.
Make sure that you never miss an episode.
And now, without delay, John Box.
Okay, you brought this up.
Ugga.
You know, that is the most misunderstood.
I mean, I remember this year, you remember in the National Championship game this year, everybody was freaking out that Ugga wasn't going to be in Los Angeles.
Yeah, I know.
I mean, what's the deal?
I mean, it's like, you know, that dog is more pampered.
And then PETA, of course, had to come out saying, well, we need to go away with live animal mascots, you know.
Ugga's the greatest mascot in America, as Sports Illustrated indicated all those years ago.
It was funny.
And I'll tell you, you know, I've been around Georgia football long enough to know I am very superstitious.
I'll admit, I was a little concerned that Ugga wasn't going to make the trip out there.
Of course, then you just think about Georgia's defense, and Ugga can watch the game for wherever he wants.
They're going to be just fine.
I mean, folks, you've got to understand, for those of you listening, John Botman's with me today, and if you've got to look at this and say, for PETA to say anything about Ugga, this dog rides in his own SUV, From Savannah.
He lives in Savannah.
He doesn't live in Athens.
He lives in Savannah with his other siblings, and they are from all there.
He rides to the game.
He has his own condo in Athens, paid for by the university's athletic group.
When he does fly, he flies first class in the...
I mean, this dog, there's nothing...
This dog, I would like part of his life.
That's all I want.
If you believe in that kind of stuff and reincarnation as animals, if you come back as Ugga, you know you have lived a superb life on planet Earth.
Exactly.
That dog has it all.
PETA is such a, look, whatever, organization.
I remember I was in Congress, John, the first few years I was in Congress, down here in Georgia, and again, today's going to be a Georgia-centric episode.
Georgia is known for poultry.
It's chickens, okay?
And there was a chicken truck accident in my district in which the driver, by the way...
My son.
Oh!
Coming in.
There we go.
What's up, big guy?
I got my youngest Shih Tzu laying over here.
She's asleep.
She don't really care about Ned.
But a chicken truck turned over.
Driver, by the way, PETA, was fine.
PETA comes out with wanting to have a marker John, and this is sort of sad and funny at the same time.
You know how they do the people who die, DUI? They put a cross on the side of the road.
PETA wanted to put up a marker for the dead chickens.
I'm not surprised.
One of my staff members, it's probably still one of my favorite tweets of all time.
We talked about it in the office and one of my staff members named Gane Robinson, who's now an Air Force pilot, he said, he came up with the tweet.
He said, every time a chicken dies, someone gets their wings.
And we put that out and Either the flat or the drumstick, whatever.
And we put it at PETA. Oh my lord, they went off the chain.
I gotta give it to PETA because they are top level trolls.
They will do anything if it gets them some attention.
When I was working in local news one time, I covered a story and I love this.
There was a restaurant down here in Florida and they had one of those grab tanks, you know, instead of grabbing like a stuffed animal that they had live lobsters in there.
You could reach down and grab a live lobster and pull it out.
And PETA, of course, they showed up and they were having a fit about it.
But they are very good at getting attention.
And when they get attention, you get donations.
You may know a couple people like that on Capitol Hill.
No, really?
You're kidding me.
No.
Those humble individuals who never have seen a camera.
No.
I tell you, the worst place in the world is between about five or six members in the House and them and a camera.
The last time I heard that joke is the most dangerous place to be in Washington is between Chuck Schumer and a camera.
Oh, yeah.
There's a lot of, as you go along with, but again, it's like, by the way, while we're just laughing about this, if you ever want to get a really good, fun website, not website, but Twitter to follow, follow the National Park Service.
Okay.
They got a sense of humor, or is it just so bad it's good?
Oh, they're funny.
They got a sense of humor.
They had a picture the other day of a frozen waterfall, and the captain was, okay for all of you, don't go chasing waterfalls.
Stick to the rivers and the streams that you know.
These are very dangerous.
Another reference for our main topic today that we're going to get to.
Exactly!
The music part.
All right, now, one of the things, and let's set the stage for this, okay?
Because both of us being Georgia boys, both of us in this world, and we're both in media, we both do all those things, and look, you can spend hours talking about the idiotic Biden administration and even dumb Republicans and everything else.
We all get that.
But coming from Georgia, there's things that matter.
Yes.
Georgia football.
Music.
Music number two.
Barbecue.
Barbecue.
Cornbread.
Anything.
I think food number three.
Anything that you know.
Food in general, barbecue.
And for those of y'all in Texas, it is pork barbecue.
Let's just make this out now.
But anyway, those kind of things.
But music comes back.
But also, and I've gotten dealing with this a lot when I was in Congress when I dealt with the Music Modernization Act, and I got to know a lot of these folks.
But when you went to school in Athens, what most people don't realize is that Athens...
It's almost a Detroit of the South in growing up here.
Talk about it because you went to the University of Georgia, went over there and the music scene over there, the downtown scene is just an amazing place.
It absolutely is an amazing place and that was part of the appeal.
If you grow up in Georgia, you hear about Athens, you know about REM, you know about the B-52s.
Right when I was graduating high school, I was really starting to listen to a lot of widespread panic And I was there in the spring of 1998 when widespread panic played in downtown Athens right there in the middle to see him play.
And that was right before I started college.
I was still a senior in high school and we had just lost in the state or either the state of the regional baseball playoffs My buddy Michael Nelson and I drove to Athens, didn't have a place to stay, but we went and watched Widespread Panic.
And I remember I called my dad the next day, and this is before cell phones.
I called him from a payphone at a Waffle House on 316, and I said, Dad, just checking in, letting you know everything's okay.
And my dad said, What happened last night, John?
I woke up and I read on the front page of the AJC, That there was widespread panic in Athens last night.
And I said, Dad, Dad, it's just a band.
We were just going to a concert.
But it was amazing.
It was a free concert.
But...
The following four or five years that I was in Athens, I had the chance to see so many amazing music acts at the 40 Watt, at the Georgia Theater, and you really start to appreciate what we grew up around in the music.
I sent you a list earlier today of some of my favorite Georgian artists, and the first song that I sent you that's number one on my all-time Georgia playlist is Honeysuckle Blue by Drivin' and Cryin'.
A lot of people might not know that band outside of Georgia.
They did have some pretty big success in the 90s.
But when they sing about the Chattahoochee, have you ever seen the Chattahoochee in the Blue Ridge Mountains?
Now that I don't live in Georgia, these are the songs that take me back and really just make me feel at home.
This whole idea was spawned by your interview with Neil Thrasher, the writer of Flyover States, and Jason Aldean, another great Georgian.
You know, music is what keeps us sane.
Maybe for you too, but when I have a bad day at work or when I think the world's going to hell in a handbasket, a certain song on the way home from work can really put my mind right.
And especially a song from Georgia can take me back and really just kind of make me feel at home.
Well, you mentioned that as well.
I mean, there's also another song on there that you talked about on your list was Statesboro Blues.
Yeah.
And, you know, that is...
Everybody forgets, and I don't know why they forget, but it is a...
Georgia's music doesn't run just in the last, you know, 20 years.
Absolutely.
I mean, we go back to, you know, Otis Redding.
Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.
Here's your trivia, if you may not have known about this song, that Otis Redding recorded, set out, Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.
Did you know that it actually came out about a week or two after he died?
I think I knew that.
I wasn't actually sure, though, but that's a good bit of trivia.
I was kind of going back and forth between Ray Charles singing Georgia or putting Otis Redding Dock of the Bay on there, and I figured I had to go with one from the genre, so I picked Ray Charles.
It was a tough choice, though.
It was a tough choice.
And we could go on and on.
I mean, I sent you 10 songs, but I could probably make that list.
Oh, I know.
And we're going to get a lot of them.
Hey, one of the things that I do is also for you out there, and you can at me, you can go on Twitter, you can do whatever you want to do.
Willie Nelson singing George On Your Mind is not Ray Charles singing George On My Mind.
Don't even go there.
Don't tell me that.
I like Willie Nelson and his own world.
And also, who was the other one that sang it that they kept going back to all the time?
Oh, I don't know.
But, you know, CeeLo Green and Band of Horses, they have another good version of Georgia.
Totally different song too, but it came to mind.
But I can't think...
But you're right.
Willie Nilsson should stick to...
He should stick to Whiskey River and that type of stuff.
But yeah, there's only real one Georgia and it's Ray Charles Georgia.
And remember when they used to...
When I was a kid, a little kid, before we had cable, Georgia Public Television, when they would sign off at midnight.
Do you remember this?
I used to stay up late because they would play...
Georgia On My Mind by Ray Charles, and they would do these video sequences of all throughout the state, from the coast all the way up to the mountains.
Man, I wish I could find that clip because that's some serious nostalgia right there.
Oh, it is.
We'll have to look it up, see if we can find it.
But, you know, also, remember when Ray Charles, they actually, it was back when they made George On My Mind the song.
It was the early 80s.
He went to the Georgia legislature and actually played on the House floor, played George On My Mind.
Yeah, yeah.
And then the movie came out.
I'm reminded, too, I also have a major omission on that list, too.
I don't have any James Brown songs.
On that list.
Another Georgian.
Augusta, Georgian.
Who I should have included.
So that's my fault.
I put the Red Coat Marching Band doing Krypton on there.
I should have just stuck with the popular music and gone And including some James Brown on there.
That's a mistake.
Well, I mean, the thing about it is there's just so many.
I mean, and your list is great, but also in your list as well.
I mean, a lot of the, you know, we're talking about Jason Alden, Luke Bryan, Cole Swindell.
I mean, music that is, all of these guys, South Georgia boys.
That's right.
And I actually, when I was in college, Luke Bryan was in a band called Naomi Road.
And they were out of Georgia Southern.
I remember they came to the Sigma Chi house and I saw them.
And we were determined, our band director at the time, his name was Chris York.
He was talking about this band, Miami Road, and how great they are.
And they're going to come to our house and the girls probably aren't going to come because they play original songs.
But this guy, the lead singer is hot and we got to have him at our house.
So I remember we had them there.
There were like six people in the band room.
Nobody had heard of Miami Road, though.
But now, of course, Luke Bryan is selling out, you know, arenas all over the country.
And a few of us can say we were there that night at the Sigma Chi house many years ago listening to Miami Road.
And the interesting thing is the story about Luke, if you ever listen, and I've gotten to know Luke, when he got to Nashville, they didn't know what to do with him.
Because he was rough.
Yeah.
I mean, he was, you know, his singing voice, his style.
And so they just sort of began to prepare him.
And then he, you know, began again to hit.
And what's really interesting is, is behind the scenes, and that's what we do with our songwriter series that you saw about, is the songwriters from Georgia, many of Dallas Davidson, Ben Hayslip, Rhett Aikens, some of the others, are the ones who wrote most of those songs that, you know, Luke then took to skyrocket status.
Yeah, there's something in the soil or the water, maybe it's that red clay, but it's the tradition of Georgia and the music going all the way back to the Allman Brothers.
I remember I had a friend named Addison Blakeslee.
His dad used to play us the Allman Brothers.
When we were in high school, he'd be like, no, boys, this is real music here.
Listen to the slide guitar.
Listen to Wayne Allman.
Listen to this stuff.
This is real music.
This is our roots.
It was amazing.
Well, you get Allman Brothers, you get the Allman Brothers, you got, you know, a lot of the stuff back there, but you also get into the old Southern rock genre, not necessarily from Georgia, but Leonard Skinner, you get, you know, the Marshall Tucker Band, you get Atlanta Rhythm Section.
I still have memories of Atlanta Rhythm Section, you know, doing Champagne Jam.
Champagne Jam, yeah.
Oh, my God.
Filling up Georgia Tech Stadium back when we were doing those kind of things.
And I think, John, from my perspective, it comes from a culture of scene.
And people don't realize this in South Georgia, but in North Georgia as well, that Georgia is very rural for many, many years.
Atlanta has, of course, blossomed, but it is still...
We came from a society that was...
We were poor in resources, but not poor in culture and spirit.
Exactly.
And so what we had was, is you would have families or people in communities get together, and on Friday and Saturday night, they would have what we call hootenannies, or they would have, you know, people over, and everybody would be cooking barbecue, and they'd be, you know, Jim, you know, would play guitar or singing, or they'd sing at the church.
And this is how that culture just developed.
It is.
I had, there are two boys in my paternity, the Holder brothers, Gable and Whit Holder, And they could pick guitars and sing in harmony.
It was a true Southern tradition that they learned from their parents, going to church and all that stuff.
And it was so amazing to hear.
I remember they did a version of Seven Bridges Road by the Eagles, and I was just left speechless by their ability to play the song and to harmonize at the same time.
You know, I have Travis Tritt on that list too, and he is a hometown favorite because my son's going to Get in the background here.
He's interested in the music conversation.
But Travis Tritt, growing up in Marietta, Georgia, post-Oak Tritt, you hear stories about Travis's grandfather being a bus driver in that area.
And I used to get my hair cut at a place called Bob's Barbershop off of Sandy Plains Road and Highway 5. And I never saw him there, but the rumor was that Travis used to go there to get that mullet trimmed up and looking good.
But everybody talked about him just like he was the salt of the earth that he Had become famous, gone to Nashville and become a platinum-selling country artist, but he always kept in touch and maintained his roots there.
I think that's something else, too, about Georgia, is that you've got to keep it real or you're going to get rejected, speaking of which.
Speaking of kids, but look, Alan Jackson, when you go back to Luke, Luke still maintains his...
Alan Jackson, too.
We're going to get in trouble.
We left so many people off this list.
We've got to name them all.
Alan Jackson, I met the gentleman who was actually the producer that ended up with him.
Alan was living in his car in Nashville, in his truck.
And one day, the guy who actually finally put him out there knocked on his window and said, son, what are you doing?
And he said, I'm just up here from Georgia trying to make it.
And he had the cassette tape, and it was Chattahoochee and some of these others.
And he said, my God.
And again, the rest is history.
But again, it goes back to that...
How many times have you met folks, John?
You're talking about your fraternity days, and I'd love to hear more about your Athens time because it is so important.
People that you wouldn't expect and the musical background that some of them had here in Georgia that, again, really?
I mean, this guy's out playing football.
He's cutting wood, but he hasn't been turning around and on Sunday morning sing Amazing Grace and bring tears to you, you know?
Music has always, I think, brought the cultures together in the Deep South, especially during segregation, like sports and food.
There were certain things about African-American culture in the Deep South that were undeniable to the white population, the food, the music, the sports.
And that, I think, has kept the real fabric of Southern culture together because you had different classes in addition to the different races, and that was always the common ground that could be found, even when other Aspects of civilization and society didn't get along well together.
Here's another kind of crazy story.
Right after I graduated UGA, I did not have a job in television yet, and I wound up working at the Apple Store at Lenox Mall for about three or four months.
And while I was working there, the rapper Killer Mike came in.
I've always wanted to reconnect with him and talk to him about this.
He's been very open about it.
Although he supported Bernie Sanders, he's had great conversations with Governor Kemp about the importance of the Second Amendment and things like that.
But he came into the Apple Store just an average guy looking to buy a new computer.
And we talked through it all.
And he told me what he needed a computer for.
And then we got to the cash register.
He whipped out a black Amex card.
It's the first time I'd ever seen a black card.
And it said Outkast thing on it.
And I said, you were here with Outkast?
Yes, my name is Mike.
I'm Killer Mike.
And I'd never heard of him before.
But it was just, you know, platinum selling artists were just that ubiquitous in Atlanta at the time that one would just wander into the Apple store where I happen to work.
And buy a computer from me.
Well, you got Outkast.
I mean, you missed, I mean, Outkast, you know, Roses.
I mean, there's so many songs from Outkast.
But here's an interesting thing that people might not listen to this, you know, may have listened to this podcast, we'll find out.
People didn't realize that the guys in Outkast, Andre, Big Boy, all these folks, and Ludacris, and all of them, they all knew each other.
They did.
Yeah.
In the Dungeon family.
Actually, there was an article, again, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, That my dad pointed out to me about these rappers from Atlanta and how their music actually had somewhat of a positive message.
And if you listen to their songs, it's about...
One of the things that I love about Big Boy is he constantly talks about the importance of family.
He is a family man and he loves his kids.
And that was always apparent in his music from the beginning.
And, you know, that's just one of the things that I gravitated towards Outkast about.
The other thing, too, you talked about the Atlanta rhythm section.
You know, I think about songs like Doraville.
You listen to Outkast.
They talk about East Park and Decatur, or College Park, East Point and Decatur.
And when I was playing travel baseball growing up, we'd be driving all over the metro area and listening to these songs and hearing these names called out.
And, you know, again, it just makes you feel like you're part of this amazing community that is the metro Atlanta, the Georgia area, and you can really feel part of it.
Well, if you ever drove around near the airport in Atlanta and you come across Old National Highway and you've not listened to a ludicrous song, you would not...
I mean, it made Old Nat.
Old National's got the...
I don't know what it really means, so I won't say the word, but yes.
No, no, no, no, no.
But you do see this.
And explain to people, you know, someone who lived in Athens and Atlanta, saying the – because I have friends when I was – because you and I are about – we're not a generation apart, but we're a good 15 years apart in schooling size.
But 10 years or so – My high school, when I graduated high school, REM was just getting started in Athens.
Okay, the B-52s, you know, REM was just getting started.
And Michael Sight and the rest of them would play, and you brought up this, and I want you to emphasize this a little bit, 40 Watt Club, Georgia Club.
I mean, there's these, the Night Owl, which used to be out for country, out there off of 441 North.
Were scenes, and there still are those scenes today, these new bands, that new music is coming out of.
But Michael Saipenden, a buddy of mine, Steve McNeely, used to go down to Athens, and they would play a set, and then they'd sit out in the bar and just hang out with everybody.
And that was another cool thing, too, about it.
I never got the chance to see R.E.M. play at the 40-watt in one of those impromptu sets.
But what I did see is a lot of members of R.E.M. and other bands, you know, David Schools or Mike Mills from R.E.M., just hanging out at the bars.
And when I would go, I mean, I remember there was a brief period of time, and I believe it was the summer of 2000, spring of 2000. I had gone to see a band called the Old 97s at the 40 Watt.
And I was going up to the bar to grab a beer.
And I looked over and it's Mike Mills next to me.
And I kind of gave him a nod and, you know, acknowledge who he was.
He obviously had no idea who I was.
And then a little while later, Radiohead played a concert at Stone Mountain in a very small venue.
It was amazing to be there.
And I saw Mike Mills again, and we kind of bumped into each other.
And it was that sign, you know, again, he didn't know who I was, but he knew that I knew who he was.
And we had both been to two amazing concerts in a brief period of time.
And he kind of gave me that sign of acknowledgement, like, all right, kid, you obviously have good choice in music.
Well, and that is it.
And, you know, we look at these things, you know, from those old bands that have now gave rise to the new band.
I mean, think about, I mean, in the genres, we're covering every genre imaginable right now.
And the Migos were out of Central Gwinnett High School.
Three guys out of Central Gwinnett High School.
You know, Quavo and all those guys.
And it was just, it's that culture and you can't, I mean...
I don't know of another state, and I'm sure we'll get arguments, and you can go to the DougCollinsPodcast.com, send me an email, we'll talk about your state.
But this is mine.
And I don't know, and I've thought about this a lot.
Texas, maybe, to a little bit.
Of course, Tennessee, just in general, but everybody sort of rose there.
But just as an up out of the cut state for music in general, Georgia has one of the strongest just cultural across the board.
It has to be obvious that we're biased here, but you try to think about another state that has produced as much talent, as many hit records, songs about the state, Rainy Night in Georgia, all that other stuff.
We could go on and on.
It's probably not a coincidence, Georgia being the capital of the South.
My parents are from the Northeast.
I'm a first-generation Southerner.
One of the things that my parents have always taught me to appreciate about the South is that the United States' only real culture comes from the South.
The culture in the Northeast is derivative of the Italian and Irish immigrants and everything that immigrated there, but the cultural, the food, the music that comes from the South, that's the true American identity of our culture.
And obviously, most of that goes back to the slaves and their call and response music, which gave us rock and roll, their ability to turn Parts of meat that the slave owners didn't want to eat into barbecue and stuff like that.
Again, going back, that is the cultural fabric that holds us together in the South, all that stuff.
I just absolutely love it.
I was coming in.
I had to go to Arkansas this past week, and I was coming back in through the town in a bulletin board of 7585. For those of you who know, if you've ever been through to get anywhere north, you've got to go to downtown Atlanta.
And a big billboard that said, you're free as a bird now.
And it was a tribute to Gary Rossington.
You know, the guitarist for Lillard Skinner, Freebird, I mean, all of those things.
You know, how many people...
I mean, think about this.
You go back to...
If I told you right now, go back to a memory at the University of Georgia and think of some of these songs.
And I can go back to remember hearing Freebird and Sweet Home Alabama, hearing, like we said, Champagne Jam, Doraville.
These things, they...
What is it about it for you?
I'd love to hear your example that makes those so meaningful.
I think it's being able to wrap your arm around your buddy at a bar after a couple of pops and know every single word to the song.
I think, especially when you're a freshman at the University of Georgia and you're a fraternity or a sorority or whatever, if you're playing sports and a group of people you never met before, you might not know each other, but you know the words to the songs and you know That's how you connect with each other.
It's not a Georgia song.
I don't know where David Allen Coe is from, but that was really it for me and my fraternity brothers, singing those David Allen Coe songs in the bars and knowing every single word to those songs.
It's the human nature that song has united us since the history of mankind.
Just because we were lucky enough to grow up in Georgia, I think we were steeped I don't disagree with you.
One of the things is, and let's go back to the Allman Brothers for a little bit, and especially as you look at, you know, from...
And I think there's something interesting that you put in there that I don't hear a lot from other songs in other parts of the country.
And that is, they used...
What they knew.
You know, a rambling man traveling down Highway 41. I mean, for you, you know exactly what they're talking about.
I mean, in Highway 41, that's a great thing, too.
It can mean different places.
For me, it always meant like the big chicken.
Yeah, big chicken.
Yeah, and for me, I've always sort of took that song and I'd always sing it a little different.
I said, I'm traveling to Highway 441. Well, Highway 441, you know, runs right through Athens and down through Statesboro.
I mean, it's, and Sweet Melissa, I mean, it's, but for me, the one that you didn't put on your list from Allman Brothers is Whippin' Post.
Oh, such a great song.
Such a great song.
I mean, you know, that's the song that I put on.
I'm having a bad day, or I'm mad at the world, or something, or I just feel like I just put that on, blast it out, and that just takes me back.
You know, just your whipping post.
You know, here it's gonna be.
But it's so real.
Let me take you to- Another thing, too, to think about, you know, Dwayne Allman was on this earth for such a brief period of time and provided so much influence.
I guess he broke his finger or something and the medicine bottle came in to be and just was a virtuoso.
And did you know this too?
When Dwayne Allman played on Layla and other sort of love songs with Derek and the Dominoes, Eric Clapton, who's a little bit of a eccentric guy, he did not want his guitar work to be compared to Dwayne Allman.
So they took the original tracks and mixed them up and changed the labels so that after the song was recorded, nobody could go back and say, oh, this is Eric and this is Dwayne Allman.
Eric Clapton did not want his guitar work compared to Dwayne Allman.
That's how much he thought of him as a guitar player.
Oh, it's amazing.
One of the things that I want to get, there's a guy that I also want to talk about as well, is Chuck Lavelle.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, gosh.
Another legendary Jordan.
Yeah, the master piano player and an amazing tree farmer, too.
Yes.
I mean, I'm trying to get Chuck on the podcast.
I know some folks around him.
I'm trying to get Chuck on the podcast.
I mean, we went to see, my wife and I went last year to the Rolling Stones in Atlanta.
And, oh my God, Mick Jagger, I don't know, I mean, if there ever was the quote, you know, proverbial crossroads deal with the devil, Mick Jagger made it.
And then the rest of the singer, the guitar, but here was Chuck Lavelle, From, you know, Georgia, Macon, Georgia, an old forestry guy, and even the singers and Mick Jagger and the rest of them will say, Chuck is our backbone.
Chuck is the one that, you know...
Everyone's probably familiar with the Eric Clapton Unplugged album.
Going back to Eric Clapton, Chuck Lavelle is playing keyboards on the Unplugged album.
And again, This was before I even knew who Chuck Lavelle was or knew he was from Georgia.
That was an iconic album for me in my teens.
And you would hear Eric Clapham go, Chuck Lavelle, when he's playing, I think it's Old Love is the name of the song on the album.
And then you find out, of course, Chuck LaBelle, the greatest keyboard player in classic rock or modern rock era that plays, you know, Southern rock.
Of course, he's from Georgia.
And he's a master tree farmer.
He was with John Mayer.
He was with Black Crows.
I mean, you know, Chuck LaBelle is just not- Oh, Black Crows.
That's another one.
Black Crows.
You got it.
Okay, Black Crows.
You got it.
I hear the song in my head right now.
Hey, here I am, a man on the street.
Anyway, back then, in Atlanta, you growing up, was 96 Rock in its true form still there when you were there?
Yeah, 96 Rock was in its true form, and so was Z93. There was a period of time when we had a choice.
You could have classic rock, like the birds and the beetles and the rolling stones, or you could have new rock, 96 Rock.
And then Sometimes there was some overlap between the two, but yeah, I need to get one of those t-shirts.
I've seen they have the vintage 96 Rock t-shirts.
I need to get one of those.
I've got to send you then, John.
For everybody out there listening to this Georgia Fest, apply this to your own life.
I got a truck a couple years ago, and I've been saving my front bumper tag, and I never got one.
This past Christmas, my kids, my boys, bought me a vintage 96 Rock t-shirt.
Uh, name, you know, license plate.
And of course, and of course, it's on the front of my truck.
And which way is it turned?
Outside down, baby!
I had a buddy of mine.
I saw it.
Yeah.
I had a buddy of mine the other day come up and he was running the truck and he come out and he said, I gotta have that tag!
And I said, oh my god, yeah.
They used to have the regular guys on the morning show.
Regular guys.
And then on Friday they had the FU line.
Exactly.
That was the funniest.
That was appointment radio for me every Friday morning.
Exactly.
Southside Steve, FU2. And before we get gone, though, and in talking about this music, we've touched on, God, I mean, we might as well just get into Varsity, Stone Mountain, you know, The Fox, I mean, Chastain Park, I mean, all of the rest as we go.
Lakewood Amphitheater.
Oh, yeah, Lakewood Amphitheater.
I mean, my God.
Some of the best concerts, though.
We were talking about how we could not believe our parents would let us drive down to Lakewood Amphitheater at 16 years old, unsupervised.
You know, not the best part of Atlanta.
But I will tell you this, the people there, they seem to understand that, you know, They took care of us.
We always felt pretty safe with the parking tents and everything in Lakewood.
But yeah, that's an iconic place for a lot of events.
Oh, exactly.
Now, Six Flags did a lot of concerts in the 80s especially.
Back where now the water park is, they did a thing.
They had the Six Flags Starlight Amphitheater, whatever.
And They would just make this, and I remember one of my favorite, and it's not one of my, it's not the best concert I've ever been to, but one of my favorites was I saw the Romantics.
Remember them?
I hear the Secretly Sleep Center phone, all that.
I saw them backstage at Six Flags because the opening act was a band called The Surf, Out of Carrollton, Georgia, you know, played all the local bars and everything.
But there were cousins to my best friend.
So we got behind the stage.
Classic thing.
They're up there playing.
Huge hair.
This is the 80s, 83, 84. Huge hair.
They did not know where they were.
They were on a world tour.
And on the amps in front of them, they had Atlanta, Six Flags, Atlanta, Georgia, Friday night.
They didn't know where they were.
They were probably having too much fun.
It was.
Oh yeah, very much.
They were definitely partaking of the pharmaceutical industry that was not prescribed.
I really wonder today if some of our My kids, even though they're a little bit older, they went to the University of Georgia.
They stood the scene at 40 watt and the rest.
But your kids now, my grandkids, we're moving.
It seems like there's unfortunate a move away from those smaller venues.
It really perpetuated what we see in Athens and Atlanta to where now it's all about the big venue.
It's all about the YouTube video.
It's all about the taking away.
How do you feel like that will change us in the future?
You know, you're right.
It's not moving in the right direction.
And even now, I feel like I have a pretty good job.
I don't feel like I can afford to go to concerts like I once did when my parents were paying for it or whatever.
I don't know about you, but I kept pretty much all my ticket stubs from the concerts I used to go to.
And you look at the prices now.
I think a couple of things are happening.
I think the artists, once they can fill these big venues, are kind of forced to do so because it's really how they make their bread and butter.
These days, because the recording industry, the fact that you can download songs and rip songs and all this stuff has cut into the record sales.
The other thing, too, I don't think kids will appreciate is how we had to wait for the music.
You couldn't just go online and download it.
You had to go to the record store.
Remember Turtles?
I was going to ask you, did you ever camp out?
I never camped out, but you collect the little stamps, you know?
Oh yeah, the turtle stamps.
And then you had to buy the whole album, and then you listened to the whole album, so you would actually hear songs that weren't on the radio.
The other thing, too, that I think kids are missing out on nowadays is the localness, the local nature of the radio stations.
We were just talking about Z93 and 96 Rock, and they would play, obviously, the big hits, but they would also cater their music to locals.
It always had a local flair.
You know, REM, they're out of Athens, or B-52s are out of Athens, or Allman Brothers, they're out of Macon, Georgia, and stuff like that.
And now everything is homogenous.
Sorry, my dog wants to play, but she loves music too.
But it's about that kind of national or international flair, and it doesn't feel as personal.
So as I teach my kids about music, and when we're listening to music in the car, I'm going to try to impart that on them.
You know, this is roots music.
This is where we're from.
And that's why it probably sounds better to you than to somebody who's from Minnesota.
You can always associate it back to home.
And those are the kind of things.
And what you meant is really interesting because we have, I mean, they're frankly in Atlanta right now, because I still listen occasionally.
They're owned by two or three conglomerates.
The big ones are owned.
And I began to notice this.
And like you, when you travel, There is a fish.
I noticed the Christian Music Station in Atlanta.
Basically, it's the same logo, just a different thing in Phoenix.
96 Rock, which doesn't exist anymore.
But you see the Z93. We forgot one, though.
V103. That's true.
V-103, the people station.
V-103, sure he ordered you the 80s.
Trank ski in the morning, right?
I mean, it was a cultural phenomenon.
It may still well be the same thing.
It is.
V-103 is still there.
And here's where you really hit it.
It's the blending of the music and the social and the culture of Atlanta.
That's where, I mean, people call in to V103 and say, hey, we got a problem here.
You know, and that's where they aired their, before talk radio was really talk radio.
That was where you called.
Yeah.
Yeah.
These people are, like, iconic.
I mean, you know, I remember you were going back to all that stuff about Ray Charles.
I remember the Monica Kaufman close-up of Ray Charles.
Oh, yeah.
And that was like, you know, that was a big deal.
It was, you know, Local television, but it seemed like it was a national thing.
You mentioned the regular guys.
What about Mary Davis?
I mean, you know, Mary Davis on Z93, you know, all these, you know, the personalities.
I mean, you got to know them.
And you don't have that anymore.
And as much because it's just the cultural kind of issues that we go.
Well, you know, as we look at this, we've been talking about, I mean, this, I think you hit something important.
I think it's a great place to end it because I want to get you back on in about another month or so.
And here's what we're going to do.
Not only is Georgia huge in music, but movies is also a big issue as well.
We could never not talk about the great Southern documentary of Smokey and the Bandit.
It's just there.
But ending up on this, you made a great point.
The music of the South is different in so many ways in that it connects you to where you grew up.
When I was in Iraq, Zac Brown Band, Fried Chicken was out.
And when he talked about the pines, peach trees, I was in a war zone, but immediately went back to North Georgia.
I knew exactly what he was talking about.
Yep.
It's the same thing for me, and that's why I put that song, Honeysuckle Blue, up there.
Have you ever seen the Blue Ridge Mountain Boys or the Chattahoochee?
And the Honeysuckle Blue.
I don't even know what Honeysuckle Blue means, but we got Honeysuckle all over our backyard.
And, you know, you take that little thing out in the middle and drink whatever.
But it's part of my childhood and it'll never not be part of my childhood.
And one of my favorite songs, no doubt.
I agree.
Folks, you know, this is why I love John.
John's great show on Newsmax, and you watch him every day, 12 to 2. You know, I enjoy always being on there with him, but I always love having him on the show.
And we'll have him back on real soon.
We'll do movies next time, and, you know, tie this all together.
Movies and maybe your favorite barbecue joints throughout the state of Georgia.
There we go.
We've got to get him food.
All right.
Zebs, spray berries.
We can go on.
Get up in the North Georgia and get it all up.
I love it.
And, folks, that's the Doug Collins Podcast.
We'll see you next time.
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