Danny Jones Podcast - #25 - The Son of a Pitchman | Billy Mays III
Aired: 2019-11-15
Duration: 01:19:05


=== Moving to Tampa at Twenty (03:09) ===

[00:00:07]  Cool.
[00:00:07]  So today's guest is Billy Mays the third.
[00:00:11]  What's up y'all?
[00:00:12]  What's up bro?
[00:00:13]  So for everyone listening, tell everyone who you are and a little bit about your background.
[00:00:18]  Hmm.
[00:00:21]  I'm a musician and I perform locally and somewhat nationally as my career.
[00:00:32]  And I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
[00:00:36]  Oh shit, represent.
[00:00:37]  That's where he's from.
[00:00:39]  Yeah.
[00:00:40]  Hell yeah.
[00:00:42]  When did you I moved to Florida when I was like 10, but my dad, I moved here with just my mom, so I would always go back in the summer, the winter, all year long.
[00:00:49]  Nice, man.
[00:00:50]  Yeah, all my family still lives there.
[00:00:52]  Cool.
[00:00:52]  Yeah, me too.
[00:00:52]  I love Pittsburgh.
[00:00:53]  Hell yeah.
[00:00:54]  It's awesome there.
[00:00:55]  It's too cold, though.
[00:00:56]  Yeah, it can be.
[00:00:58]  Yeah, I moved down here when I was 18 for college.
[00:01:02]  I went to Full Sail in Orlando, which is like a, I don't know.
[00:01:07]  Yeah, I looked into going there, actually, way back in the day.
[00:01:09]  So I went for recording arts and entertainment business.
[00:01:12]  And I had a bachelor's degree by the time I was 20, which I find to be kind of useless.
[00:01:19]  But I never had to tell anyone that I had a degree to get work or to do what I do.
[00:01:24]  But it was a good experience.
[00:01:26]  And then I sort of moved over to the Tampa area when I was 20.
[00:01:32]  And I've been here ever since on and off with a little bit of travel in there and touring.
[00:01:37]  How did you get into making music and doing what you do?
[00:01:41]  I remember, so I think one of the biggest things that hit me, which I thought was like a really good introduction to who you are, was actually the full sale video that you did.
[00:01:54]  And you talk about the first album you made in 2009.
[00:01:58]  And you talk about like, you know, your relationship with your family and the process of making that album.
[00:02:04]  And did that point in time kind of like kick off where you are now?
[00:02:08]  Yeah.
[00:02:08]  Was that kind of like a turning point for you?
[00:02:11]  Yeah, I kind of look at that as the launching point.
[00:02:16]  I had actually made other albums that I didn't really release in any capacity.
[00:02:21]  When I was in high school, I was making albums on like the most primitive gear and like eight track digital recorders and guitar and I had no knowledge of what to do.
[00:02:31]  But the one thing that I felt like I did intuitively was one, songwriting, like instrumental songs, and two, structuring those songs into albums.
[00:02:41]  Like, okay.
[00:02:42]  I always feel like I've been drawn to the sequencing of tracks on an album.
[00:02:49]  Like, that's something that I'm just like super passionate about.
[00:02:52]  When I'm listening to music, I feel like I'm always taking in the information of why they started with this song and why this track three is really strong and the arc and what they say for the end.
[00:03:03]  And I'm always thinking like that too for my stuff.
[00:03:05]  So I was always doing that.
[00:03:07]  And then by the time 2009 came around, well, that was a big year for me anyway in life.

=== Surviving the Apartment Fire (05:50) ===

[00:03:16]  I had lost all of my gear, all of my music gear, everything I owned in an apartment fire in February of 2009.
[00:03:23]  Wow.
[00:03:24]  In Orlando?
[00:03:25]  No.
[00:03:25]  Is this when you're going to school?
[00:03:26]  No, not when you're going to school?
[00:03:27]  No.
[00:03:27]  This was, I was, I guess I had been over here for about three years maybe.
[00:03:32]  And I had just gotten an apartment on my own.
[00:03:34]  I was living with my dad for a while.
[00:03:36]  And then I finally got my apartment on my own in kind of the Clearwater area.
[00:03:42]  Okay.
[00:03:42]  And within two weeks of moving in, my whole apartment building burned down.
[00:03:49]  God damn it.
[00:03:51]  And I, It turned out to be arson.
[00:03:55]  Really?
[00:03:56]  And my dad thought that maybe someone was targeting him and we have the same name.
[00:04:01]  But it turned out to be, from what we know, it turned out to be the apartment that I moved into, somebody had gotten evicted after like 10 years from living there.
[00:04:12]  And people had seen him circling around in the days leading up to it.
[00:04:15]  And then they definitely found that there was accelerant used in the fire.
[00:04:20]  And they never caught the guy, I don't think.
[00:04:23]  For all I know, I think he skipped town or something.
[00:04:26]  They were looking for him.
[00:04:27]  He was the person of interest.
[00:04:30]  But thankfully, nobody was really injured.
[00:04:32]  I think I think like my neighbor Tried to save too much of his stuff and like got burned in his arm just slightly and then his dog also like wouldn't come down the steps.
[00:04:41]  Oh shit, but anyway, my my apartment Was like kind of the target.
[00:04:45]  So I remember I remember you saying you like looked back once you got out and you saw the place literally Yeah, I literally like you were in there when it was like 3 a.m.
[00:04:53]  Okay, I'll never forget because I had watched Donnie Darko that night, which involves a big house fire and so I woke up kind of inexplicably around 3 a.m. and I ran to the front door of the apartment and I didn't hear a knock or anything.
[00:05:12]  I was kind of just like, what's going on?
[00:05:14]  I was like getting to daze.
[00:05:15]  And I opened the door and my neighbor who was also a maintenance guy at the apartment was like, hey, there's a fire.
[00:05:21]  You got to get your stuff and go.
[00:05:22]  And I was like, all right.
[00:05:24]  And I went and got my girlfriend who was there at the time and I said, hey, grab your backpack.
[00:05:29]  Like we got to go.
[00:05:30]  And I didn't grab anything except my phone, wallet, keys, and a digital camera that I had sitting on the nightstand.
[00:05:37]  And I made it, by the time I made it back to the door, the whole stairs were covered.
[00:05:43]  Like, I wouldn't have been able to walk through these flames.
[00:05:46]  This was like, I thought, oh shit, well now we have to like think about jumping out the window or something.
[00:05:52]  But thankfully the maintenance guy was like much more lucid and awake.
[00:05:55]  He ran and got a fire extinguisher and sprayed it just enough to get it down.
[00:06:03]  And my girlfriend and I just ran past.
[00:06:05]  And by the time we turned around, which was like 30 seconds later, it had already spread.
[00:06:11]  all over the roof and like where we were sleeping was already like, we would have been dead if we hadn't woken up, you know, like it was, the smoke inhalation would have been crazy.
[00:06:19]  So we turned around and we were the first ones out, but we were also the first apartment to really go.
[00:06:24]  And then it took another like, I don't know, 30 minutes or so for the whole place to burn down.
[00:06:29]  Everyone started evacuating and it was only two floors, so it was kind of small.
[00:06:32]  Yeah.
[00:06:33]  But I remember kind of just being in shock and like kind of laughing at the fact that like some of my stuff was still just in boxes.
[00:06:42]  And so it probably just went up in flames like super easily and all at once.
[00:06:49]  And I was, I called my friend who had built me a custom guitar.
[00:06:54]  It was a custom built guitar for my hands.
[00:06:57]  And he spent a year making it, a year of his life making it.
[00:07:00]  And it was sitting right there.
[00:07:01]  And I didn't grab it.
[00:07:02]  And I, he was the first person I called at like 3 a.m.
[00:07:05]  And I'm like, dude, I'm watching the apartment burn down and the guitar's in there.
[00:07:10]  And he was like super, And I was like, I think I'm gonna like once they put out the fire Maybe I'll go back up and be able to save it.
[00:07:16]  He's like dude, no that that had a lacquer finish on it that hadn't even dried yet like it takes months to dry So he's like if any flame got near it It probably just went straight up in flames.
[00:07:26]  Oh my god, dude.
[00:07:28]  That's terrifying.
[00:07:30]  Yeah, so so what did you do after that?
[00:07:33]  I just sort of I Guess I sort of just started from scratch.
[00:07:38]  I mean all your equipment you had you had probably a lot of expensive shit.
[00:07:42]  Yeah, I had a studio and I had cameras and stuff like that, stuff I had built up in over five years or so or more.
[00:07:53]  And thankfully, well, okay, I also lost all my clothes.
[00:07:58]  I lost.
[00:07:58]  Oh, God.
[00:07:59]  Like stupid stuff that you wouldn't consider.
[00:08:01]  Like I had, I had like a pair of sandals that I was wearing when I left and then like the shirt that I was wearing.
[00:08:06]  And then I realized like, I don't have any underwear.
[00:08:08]  I don't have anything.
[00:08:09]  So I think Salvation Army was there or the Red Cross or something.
[00:08:12]  It was the Red Cross.
[00:08:13]  They were there and they, they were able to write checks for like 140 bucks to everyone that lived in the, in the complex or in that building.
[00:08:22]  So I went and bought some t-shirts and stuff like that.
[00:08:26]  But I'll tell you what, the, uh, as horrible as that was and traumatic and I was like, I would have.
[00:08:31]  Panic attacks when i've smelt fire for like a couple weeks afterwards it's, there was still like a really bring this a little bit closer.
[00:08:38]  Oh sorry, just you can, you can like force it up a little bit.
[00:08:41]  Yeah, there you go.
[00:08:43]  Yeah, you gotta like really tighten it.
[00:08:45]  Cool cool good yeah perfect, as bad as that was.
[00:08:48]  It was uh kind of freeing to not own anything for a bit.
[00:08:53]  Yeah, that makes sense like just like to start clean.
[00:08:56]  A minimalist yeah, totally and and I think it kind of messed with my whole perception of possessions for a while.

=== Music as Life Expression (05:03) ===

[00:09:06]  But obviously, you know, you always build back up and get new stuff.
[00:09:09]  So to answer your question, my dad helped me get back on my feet with like the bare essentials.
[00:09:15]  And for me, that was like some clothes.
[00:09:19]  And I ended up just like staying at my girlfriend's mom's house or something because it was close by like for maybe a few months.
[00:09:26]  And my dad got me a guitar and an amp, like pretty cheap amp, pretty decent guitar.
[00:09:34]  And like that's all I had.
[00:09:35]  I didn't really have like effects pedals anymore.
[00:09:37]  So I was, it like kind of stripped everything down.
[00:09:40]  And like I was super lucky to even have that, but it kind of helped me therapeutically just start from scratch and process the weird emotions about the fire.
[00:09:53]  Yeah.
[00:09:54]  Like through music without, without trying to, you know, be cool or anything.
[00:09:59]  I was just kind of like making music to have fun again or not to have fun to, to meditate and to, um, process.
[00:10:07]  Wow.
[00:10:07]  Were you working at the time?
[00:10:08]  Like, what were you doing?
[00:10:09]  Yeah, I was, I was a freelance production assistant.
[00:10:12]  Okay.
[00:10:13]  TV.
[00:10:14]  And that's how you got into production because your dad kind of like brought you along and showed you the ropes and brought you on sets.
[00:10:19]  He kind of just brought me on set one day for a kaboom commercial and was like introduced me to the production manager who I actually knew from when I was a kid.
[00:10:29]  And he was just like, put him to work.
[00:10:31]  And I was like, oh, that's awesome.
[00:10:32]  I just did what I could.
[00:10:33]  And like, I didn't even really know how to like, paint walls and stuff and that's what they wanted me to do.
[00:10:37]  So I had to like learn, like really basic things.
[00:10:40]  Because I went I didn't go to school for that, I went to school for more on the music side.
[00:10:44]  So that's okay, didn't really I?
[00:10:46]  But at the same time I learned more about life and work and technology from just throw, getting thrown into it right, trying to figure it out.
[00:10:54]  So yeah, I was working freelance production as much as I could at that time and were you doing a lot of um, the kind of in the infomercial world, or were you doing okay, big time infomercial world and like Some more high budget commercials?
[00:11:08]  Yeah.
[00:11:11]  Like all Florida based stuff.
[00:11:13]  And it's kind of a hub down here for infomercials.
[00:11:16]  So I guess that has to do with it.
[00:11:18]  Yeah, it definitely is.
[00:11:20]  After your apartment burns down, your dad helps you out getting some new stuff.
[00:11:23]  You have no clothes.
[00:11:25]  And you're just making music as a hobby.
[00:11:27]  Now you're doing it kind of like just as like a therapeutic thing to get through that loss.
[00:11:34]  Well, it turns out that I always was doing it as a hobby.
[00:11:38]  But I think this is when it clicked as like emotional practice, like something I need to do rather than I'm just doing it because it's what I like to do.
[00:11:47]  And it kind of connected my life experiences to my expression.
[00:11:54]  And like that moment was when it kind of looking back, that would be like the turning point of like, oh, now I'm making like real music.
[00:12:00]  Like before I was kind of just doing the activity of making music.
[00:12:04]  And now I felt like I was making like what I would consider art.
[00:12:08]  Right.
[00:12:08]  And that it was connected to the creator more.
[00:12:10]  So for people who don't understand exactly how it works, can you explain the exact process and how you make music?
[00:12:18]  Like with the instruments and the sampling and all that?
[00:12:22]  Yeah.
[00:12:24]  Actually, back then, I really wasn't doing it this way.
[00:12:26]  I was sort of always a one-man band, but I don't really know if there even was that good of technology for live looping back then.
[00:12:32]  So what I would do is I would kind of just layer the shit out of guitar.
[00:12:41]  It would be as though there were eight guitar players playing at the same time.
[00:12:44]  They were all me.
[00:12:45]  So that's how I started.
[00:12:48]  And that's how I got any kind of thing resembling big sound back then, like in high school even and stuff.
[00:12:56]  And so I was always kind of starting on a self-taught method that probably wasn't the best way to do things.
[00:13:02]  But I guess I did have a looper back then in 2009.
[00:13:09]  The Red Roland guitar pedal one?
[00:13:10]  Yeah, I think I did have that one.
[00:13:13]  That was the one everyone had.
[00:13:14]  Like the RC20 or something.
[00:13:16]  I don't know.
[00:13:17]  Maybe I had the RC50.
[00:13:19]  Yeah.
[00:13:19]  But that was, so what it is is you press a button with your foot and it records what's happening.
[00:13:27]  And then as soon as you press it again, it just keeps looping that thing.
[00:13:29]  It just keeps playing it over and over again.
[00:13:31]  Yeah.
[00:13:31]  And you can keep layering over it.
[00:13:33]  And there's all kinds of options of tracks and depending on what one you have.
[00:13:36]  And now I've, I would say like five years after that, Boss put out a really special one called the RC505, which is sort of the standard now for tabletop loopers.
[00:13:46]  Yeah.
[00:13:46]  Okay.
[00:13:47]  It's all hand-based.
[00:13:48]  And that's kind of what I use now for everything I use for my infinite third sets, which are guitar looping and beats on the spot.
[00:13:55]  I use that.
[00:13:56]  And then for mouth counsel, this other thing that I do, it's really just the RC505 and a microphone.
[00:14:02]  And it involves other people and just voices.
[00:14:06]  And so that's where I've gotten to since 2009.

=== The 2009 Turning Point (04:56) ===

[00:14:10]  But back then, yeah, I was, I guess I was into more like, I was getting into more ambient music.
[00:14:20]  I guess I love that.
[00:14:21]  Like I told you, when we, when I first met you I was I really got an Aphex Twin vibe from yeah yeah, he like he does the same thing.
[00:14:27]  He'll go, he'll do his massive live sets and he'll just sit in the corner of the stage with his little, with his little whatever it is yeah, and then he just like makes little and there's just like literally there's hundreds of thousands of people in the crowd.
[00:14:39]  He just sitting there, just like in his own little world.
[00:14:41]  Yeah, and Aphex is amazing.
[00:14:43]  And there's a couple other producers like that that I would say that I am influenced by.
[00:14:48]  For Ted just, It takes a lot for me to really get into an artist that kind of leans more towards the DJ world, because I feel like you have to really recognize their vibe, that they bring, even if they're sampling or remixing or whatever.
[00:15:06]  They always kind of have their stamp of what they do.
[00:15:09]  So, yeah, I think besides that, I was listening to Sega Rose, Explosions in the Sky, Maguire, and bands like that.
[00:15:20]  And I think that opened up.
[00:15:22]  Yeah, Maguire is one of my favorite bands.
[00:15:24]  I think that opened up that style of like instrumental music, like epic instrumental music for me.
[00:15:31]  And so my first album came out in December of 2009.
[00:15:34]  The same year that your apartment.
[00:15:36]  Yeah, well, okay, well, then I guess the ending of that portion of the story is that I got back on my feet after the fire.
[00:15:43]  And I think it was June.
[00:15:46]  Well, no.
[00:15:47]  Yeah, it was June, beginning of June, end of May that I moved into a new apartment finally.
[00:15:51]  And I kind of like was getting back on my feet.
[00:15:53]  In Clearwater?
[00:15:54]  This is in Dunedin.
[00:15:55]  Okay.
[00:15:55]  So close to Clearwater.
[00:15:57]  And just getting settled in, kind of like building up my collection of items and furniture and stuff like that slowly.
[00:16:06]  And then in June of 2009, my dad just passed away unexpectedly at the age of 50.
[00:16:14]  So that was sort of heavy to like tack on to that moment.
[00:16:19]  It was obviously like would have been bad on its own, but like the fire was almost like really manageable.
[00:16:24]  It all survived compared to that.
[00:16:26]  Yeah.
[00:16:26]  And then, you know, when my dad died, it was, it was sort of like a thing.
[00:16:32]  Like it was like a lot of, a lot of complication just around life at that point, with, uh, even in my work.
[00:16:40]  And how old were you?
[00:16:41]  I was uh 22, I think I was 22.
[00:16:46]  I think I turned 23 in august of that year.
[00:16:49]  So yeah, that was.
[00:16:53]  That was like the one, two punch of 2009 that I look back at as one of the most important years of my life, like not just for shitty reasons, because also at that time I sort of solidified what I wanted to do with my life, with music and stuff and, without having much experience or knowledge Or wisdom yet, I kind of set out to like finish this album by the end of the year and I Was able to do that.
[00:17:22]  It's called gently, the album's called gently, and some of it was being written even before my dad died, So I kind of just like kept going down the Mm-hmm, you know, let it keep avalanching down the hill once once he died It was like all I had to really like focus on that I cared about so I did that and It was a pretty strong album.
[00:17:41]  I still look back at it and I'm like damn there was something special going on because I can't even recreate some of that stuff now.
[00:17:46]  It's I don't know what I was doing, but I think I was just so focused and zoned in on completing that task, not even knowing how important it would be for the future and what I was building.
[00:17:59]  So that album kind of just, would you say that that album reflects that whole year for you?
[00:18:07]  It's kind of a pretty deep sounding album emotionally, but it's surprisingly uplifting and optimistic, which I guess you could say is how I felt in 2009 was like, Surprisingly optimistic in the wake of all that because it kind of like I feel like it kind of woke me up, whereas I I didn't really know what I was doing with my life so much.
[00:18:29]  I kind of had like a vague idea that I wanted to make music and stuff and I was kind of just going along with life yeah.
[00:18:35]  And I think when those two things happened, it sort of like jolted me to like just reflect on what I want to do and how I want to do that, and i'm thankful for it, because there wouldn't, I wouldn't be doing what i'm doing today without going through all that right that.
[00:18:52]  I mean I can't imagine that moment when you find out that your dad passed away.
[00:18:56]  I mean, it has to feel like it wasn't even real or you were in a dream or something.
[00:19:00]  It was just like yeah.
[00:19:02]  I can remember the morning.

=== A Close Bond with Dad (08:08) ===

[00:19:06]  My dad was actually, he had a really bad hip.
[00:19:09]  Not many people know this.
[00:19:10]  He had a horrible hip and he got his hip replaced twice, the same hip.
[00:19:14]  And his body was rejecting it.
[00:19:17]  The first time it just didn't work.
[00:19:19]  And then the second time he got a staph infection.
[00:19:22]  And it was pretty messed up.
[00:19:25]  He had his third hip replacement where they told him this is the last one we can do.
[00:19:28]  If it doesn't work, you might not be able to walk.
[00:19:31]  Fuck.
[00:19:31]  So that monday he was scheduled in the morning to to have this hip surgery and then saturday night he got in from doing all this traveling to the shoot last minute commercials before he was going to be down for a while and he got in to Tampa Bay, Tampa airport.
[00:19:52]  It's kind of a funny thing.
[00:19:53]  You can look it up, is that the video where the plane, his plane, the wheel blew out on landing and, like the suitcases fell out and he got hit on the head with his own suitcase or like other people's suitcases and?
[00:20:04]  And then they even interviewed him, like local news interviewed him coming off the plane because they were like, oh, notable local guy, Billy Mays was on the plane.
[00:20:11]  And so he has this like really just exhausted look on his face.
[00:20:15]  And I knew, I know what he's going into at that time.
[00:20:17]  Oh, yeah.
[00:20:18]  And he called me and we had this long talk.
[00:20:20]  He was just like happy to be alive.
[00:20:22]  And he was talking about like, we're just going to get this hip done.
[00:20:24]  And then we're going forward with all these business things where I was going to help him with a lot of the kind of the PR stuff.
[00:20:30]  Oh, really?
[00:20:31]  Basically, the website that I run now, BillyMays.org is probably a version of what I would have made with him had he still been alive was just sort of like.
[00:20:37]  Oh, yeah.
[00:20:38]  Collecting his work.
[00:20:40]  You know, that's kind of what it was okay because nobody was doing that, and so that happened.
[00:20:45]  And then that night I was super anxious, not about the plane, I thought, whatever the plane, he got lucky.
[00:20:52]  And that happened, right.
[00:20:53]  Right, I remember feeling like super anxious just about the hip surgery, thinking something might go wrong or whatever you're worried about might not walk again or something.
[00:21:05]  Yeah yeah, totally.
[00:21:06]  And then I was telling my girlfriend about it and I was kind of like panicky and I felt like my chest was like you know how you, when you have anxiety, you're like you've I started to get really worried that I I had like a problem going on.
[00:21:22]  So I so, to calm down, I think, I turned my phone off, which I never did.
[00:21:26]  I turned my phone off for the night and went to bed.
[00:21:31]  We wake up Sunday morning and my girlfriend gets a call from her mom that says hey, Billy needs to call his mom.
[00:21:43]  She can't get a hold of him.
[00:21:43]  Everything's okay.
[00:21:45]  Just call her.
[00:21:47]  And I'm like, okay, everything's okay.
[00:21:48]  So I call her and she answers the phone crying and basically telling me that they found my dad dead when he woke up or he never woke up that night.
[00:21:58]  And it's funny because he was traveling and he just made it home that night and he finally got home and then died, which we all look back at as such weird timing.
[00:22:07]  It would have been way worse if he had died in like a hotel room or something, you know?
[00:22:10]  Somewhere else out of state or yeah.
[00:22:12]  So yeah, that was kind of just devastating.
[00:22:15]  And then I was talking to you know, a bunch of phone calls coming in that day.
[00:22:20]  And it was just a pretty surreal day.
[00:22:24]  It was had to have been a surreal, like, couple months.
[00:22:27]  Yeah, totally.
[00:22:27]  I mean, it's a surreal life, right?
[00:22:29]  Yeah, for sure.
[00:22:31]  Yeah, it's I can remember I had a Blackberry at the time.
[00:22:38]  This was my phone.
[00:22:39]  And, like, I had just gotten on Twitter maybe in, like, March of that year.
[00:22:42]  And it was just starting out.
[00:22:44]  And it wasn't really, like, a big thing yet.
[00:22:46]  But it was pretty awesome still to, like, be on Twitter.
[00:22:49]  And I got my dad on twitter.
[00:22:50]  Oh really, maybe a month or two before he died.
[00:22:52]  We we actually found someone was doing a parody account and then we asked that that kid if we could just take that account because he had gotten a bunch of followers.
[00:22:59]  He had, like the Billy Mays handle.
[00:23:01]  He had real Billy Mays, okay.
[00:23:03]  So we, we wanted to get that because it was already kind of established.
[00:23:05]  Is it still a thing?
[00:23:06]  I think so you can go on it.
[00:23:07]  And it's funny because if you look back at the tweets, there's an undefined moment where before this moment, it was just this kid tweeting what he thought my dad would tweet, and then there's a moment where people are it becomes actually my dad, Like, I think I'm still in touch with the dude.
[00:23:25]  His name's Mark.
[00:23:26]  If Mark's watching this, we're like connected on social media.
[00:23:29]  But like I think we maybe sent him some some swag or something, but that's hilarious But then like my dad would tweet like kind of goofy things he would just be like it was always like going to LA today gonna shoot commercial Thank you to all my fans like stuff like that from a blackberry.
[00:23:48]  It takes like 20 minutes and he was a total boomer like just in general about this kind of stuff tech wise.
[00:23:54]  He would like he didn't he didn't type he typed with fingers, you know, yeah, just pointer fingers.
[00:23:58]  Yeah, and You know, it was amazing that he even was able to get emails from for his work stuff and he didn't have an agent or anything like really I think I think he had an agent that he worked some of the bigger deals with towards the end like he had the Discovery Channel deal and a few other bigger deals that finally just required an agent, right?
[00:24:15]  But like he was doing so many handshake deals with his, really that's hilarious.
[00:24:20]  So Anyway, the the Blackberry thing is notable because I I actually tweeted within an hour of getting the news that my dad didn't wake up this morning because people were following me because of my dad on Twitter and it was like a pitch men thing that I was on the Pitch Men show on Discovery Channel.
[00:24:41]  So we had like this little fan base that was growing yeah, and I was just trying to be like, you know, the in-between, because my dad didn't really know how to interact in a quick way, so I would just do that.
[00:24:51]  So on Twitter I posted that and then I see it popping up on the news stations.
[00:24:55]  I was the confirmation that my dad and really it wasn't confirmation because my I wasn't verified or anything so They just started running with and they were using that tweet as verification.
[00:25:04]  You'd see screenshots of my tweet on CNN and all this stuff.
[00:25:08]  And this was kind of like, I feel like it's when we discovered this whole like mass grieving of celebrities was right around this time because it was Michael Jackson died three days earlier.
[00:25:21]  What?
[00:25:21]  On the 25th.
[00:25:22]  Yeah.
[00:25:22]  And my dad died on the 28th.
[00:25:24]  And like literally in my last conversation with my dad, he's like, you heard Michael Jackson died?
[00:25:28]  I was like, yeah, that's crazy.
[00:25:30]  And then it became that.
[00:25:33]  And then the news just blew it up.
[00:25:36]  Yeah.
[00:25:37]  Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Patrick Swayze.
[00:25:40]  So they were tweeting you and stuff?
[00:25:42]  Well, no, they were all dead.
[00:25:44]  They were celebrities that died that summer.
[00:25:46]  And so that's why later on there's a South Park episode called Dead Celebrities.
[00:25:50]  It was the season premiere of one of the seasons where my dad was heavily featured in it.
[00:25:54]  But it had all these celebrities, including Michael Jackson.
[00:25:57]  They're ghosts.
[00:25:57]  They're haunting the kid.
[00:26:01]  That's so sick.
[00:26:02]  It's amazing.
[00:26:04]  So anyway, I somehow my tweet made it to Alyssa Milano, who was a big tweeter at the time.
[00:26:11]  Okay.
[00:26:12]  And she basically just said, hey, go give Infinite Third some love.
[00:26:16]  He lost his dad today.
[00:26:18]  And that was like a really nice thing.
[00:26:20]  But I had notifications on and it literally bricked my Blackberry for like six hours.
[00:26:26]  I couldn't call anyone.
[00:26:27]  I was at my dad's condo.
[00:26:30]  We had finally made it there.
[00:26:31]  But as that was happening, the way the notifications came in, it wasn't prepared for that many.
[00:26:35]  And it was like I went from like a thousand followers to like 15,000 followers and like over a few hours.
[00:26:42]  So yeah, it like I it kind of like made me not able to tell more people like my family and stuff, which is funny.
[00:26:50]  But yeah, that's kind of a funny like that's how it like that's how it dispersed through the world was through my tweet.
[00:26:57]  Yeah.
[00:26:57]  And that's funny how stuff works.
[00:26:59]  Yeah.
[00:27:00]  So it seems like you and your dad were really close.
[00:27:03]  Yeah.
[00:27:03]  We were super close like super like personal and business.
[00:27:05]  It seems like you helped them out with a lot of I think that was where it was going.
[00:27:08]  Yeah.
[00:27:08]  I was just like filling the role of while nobody's really thinking about this stuff and I'm here and I care about it.
[00:27:13]  So I should do that.

=== Touring and Home Shows (15:18) ===

[00:27:15]  And he was super on board.
[00:27:16]  And I mean, I did like travel with him.
[00:27:20]  The last time I saw him actually was in LA.
[00:27:23]  Really?
[00:27:24]  The week he died, he went on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien when Conan had a short stint hosting the Tonight Show.
[00:27:30]  I tried finding that.
[00:27:31]  I couldn't find that interview.
[00:27:33]  Damn.
[00:27:34]  It was him and Anthony Sullivan.
[00:27:35]  They were promoting Pitch Men.
[00:27:37]  And a couple times before that, he was on Jay Leno's Tonight Show.
[00:27:40]  I saw that one.
[00:27:41]  And that was cool.
[00:27:42]  But I told him.
[00:27:44]  I don't care to go for that, but if you ever get on Conan, you got to find me out because I was like a huge Conan fan.
[00:27:50]  Yeah.
[00:27:51]  And I still am.
[00:27:52]  And the minute he got booked for Conan, he just called me and he's like, hey, I'm getting you a ticket.
[00:27:56]  Like, we're going.
[00:27:57]  That's sick.
[00:27:57]  So I went out to LA, had this great time, met Conan, hanging out backstage and stuff.
[00:28:02]  Oh, that's so cool.
[00:28:03]  That night we were all celebrating that moment.
[00:28:06]  And that was the last night that a lot of us saw him because then we all went our separate ways and he went and shot all these commercials.
[00:28:12]  And so, yeah.
[00:28:15]  We were close.
[00:28:16]  He was a huge supporter of me doing music and stuff.
[00:28:19]  Was he really?
[00:28:20]  Yeah.
[00:28:21]  Unfortunately, he never really got to hear my good music.
[00:28:24]  Yeah.
[00:28:24]  But he heard some of the stuff that I worked on in the years before that.
[00:28:30]  And he was just unconditionally supportive of it.
[00:28:34]  And my mom was like that, too.
[00:28:35]  And they were divorced since I was three.
[00:28:38]  But they both kind of had this really heavy support because I was the only child.
[00:28:43]  And I feel like, I don't know, they were just good like that.
[00:28:46]  And I lived with my mom growing up.
[00:28:50]  My dad was kind of like this traveling, I see him when I see him kind of thing.
[00:28:56]  Right, right.
[00:28:56]  Because he did the home shows, home and garden shows.
[00:28:58]  That was like his thing.
[00:28:59]  He was like a carny.
[00:29:00]  Basically like going and pitching on boardwalks and traveling home shows.
[00:29:04]  Yeah, he would pitch products.
[00:29:06]  He would get a booth at these things.
[00:29:08]  Like trade shows?
[00:29:09]  Yeah, kind of like, but just like gadgets for your home.
[00:29:13]  Like you go and you look at refrigerators and stuff, but you also look at like choppers and things like that.
[00:29:19]  So when I was growing up, When I was a baby, he was doing the wash matic, which was a hose that goes in a bucket so you can wash your car on the fly without having a hose nearby and you pump it and it uses like gravity to shoot water at your car.
[00:29:32]  Oh, shit.
[00:29:33]  And he was great at the demo.
[00:29:34]  He like learned from the veterans how to do this demo.
[00:29:38]  And so there's pictures of him holding me as a baby and like doing the thing on a standalone car door that they bring in.
[00:29:48]  Oh, that's great.
[00:29:48]  They don't bring a whole car and thing.
[00:29:49]  Yeah.
[00:29:50]  So they used to call him Bucket Billy.
[00:29:52]  And I remember there's like shirts of him, his says Bucket Billy and mine says Little Bucket Billy.
[00:29:59]  So that was the product that I knew him for as a baby.
[00:30:01]  But then when I was closer to becoming a teen, maybe like 11, 12, he was doing the Salsa Master, which was basically a food processor that you'd crank with your hands.
[00:30:11]  It was a great product.
[00:30:13]  And I think it's still around.
[00:30:15]  And his demo was just making salsa all day.
[00:30:18]  And so I would hang out when he would come to Pittsburgh for the home show.
[00:30:21]  That would be like the most time that I would spend with him.
[00:30:23]  And I'd like bring my friend and he would buy us all these like X-Men toys or whatever we were into at the time, wrestlers or Star Wars or whatever.
[00:30:32]  And we'd go on like a spree because he was just like trying to make up for not being around.
[00:30:35]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:36]  And we'd play in the hotel and swim.
[00:30:39]  And then during the days, we would go and hang out at the home show and like hang out under the booth, like playing with toys and stuff because it wasn't that much space.
[00:30:48]  Yeah.
[00:30:48]  So it was kind of like ingrained into me what he did.
[00:30:50]  Wow.
[00:30:51]  It's cool as hell.
[00:30:52]  And you could like try the salsa.
[00:30:53]  That was like part of it.
[00:30:54]  That was how you get people to come to the booth.
[00:30:56]  It's like every salsa.
[00:30:57]  So in between, we would just, I know we would just eat this salsa.
[00:31:01]  It was like, it was amazing salsa.
[00:31:02]  You'd make like a spicy one and a mild one.
[00:31:05]  And my dad legit made really good salsa.
[00:31:07]  So yeah, it was probably from making it so much with that.
[00:31:10]  Oh my gosh.
[00:31:11]  So that was like, that was the times between the home shows.
[00:31:15]  And then he lived in Florida in Clearwater.
[00:31:19]  We would come down and visit him in the summer sometimes for like a couple weeks.
[00:31:23]  Okay.
[00:31:23]  And so that was the time that I saw him.
[00:31:25]  It wasn't really like shared custody.
[00:31:26]  It was like my mom raised me and then my dad, I would just see him when I could.
[00:31:31]  Thankfully, they always got along.
[00:31:32]  Oh, that's good.
[00:31:33]  Yeah.
[00:31:34]  But yeah, so then we were close.
[00:31:39]  I guess what happened was then when I was 18 and I came down for college, it was kind of like the handoff.
[00:31:45]  And now he was going to try to make up for some of the time that he didn't get to spend with me.
[00:31:49]  So I moved in with him after college.
[00:31:52]  And really, it's like for the last five years of his life, we finally got to become like friends.
[00:31:57]  You know, best friends, and so i'm thankful that I got that time with him because I think about it.
[00:32:01]  I'm like you know, I didn't really know him that well I I knew I didn't know him as an adult and I got that time because I moved down here.
[00:32:08]  So what was it?
[00:32:09]  What was it like living?
[00:32:11]  Was he like a baller or what was his house like?
[00:32:13]  He kind of like he thought he was like I?
[00:32:16]  I look at some of his financial decisions and I just think that wasn't a good one.
[00:32:19]  I can't if I, if I get money like that, i'm never gonna do that.
[00:32:22]  Like what like?
[00:32:23]  Maybe he would like, he would like he bought a pretty by the time he made it.
[00:32:27]  I think I'm guessing it was about five years before he died and it's the house that I moved into.
[00:32:32]  It was like kind of a mansion like in Odessa, Florida.
[00:32:35]  He had it built and it was a super nice house.
[00:32:39]  It was like Florida style house.
[00:32:40]  I don't know if I like the architecture so much, but it had like a movie theater in it.
[00:32:45]  What?
[00:32:46]  Yeah, like a eight seat movie theater and like just cool shit like that.
[00:32:50]  That's so cool.
[00:32:50]  But I think his stupid investments was that he would lease cars.
[00:32:58]  So he would always have like four cars at a time.
[00:33:01]  In the time, like and this only lasted a few years he would have like a Bentley and a Range Rover and Escalade and like a BMW, and like he would lease frame cars yeah, he would lease them and it was like such an expense and like, looking back, it's probably why, you know, there was no huge fortune for me to uh, for me to take when he died, but then again I think it was just his thing of like I would love to see a Billy May's Cribs episode dude.
[00:33:27]  It would have been awesome he was.
[00:33:29]  He was so poor growing up and like just lived in the in Mckees Rocks Pennsylvania, which is like a noteworthy town for, like you know, not good things, and so I think he hustled so much and then when he finally got that money, he he just wanted to like just enjoy it, kind of prove it and live it up.
[00:33:49]  You know, and like enjoy it.
[00:33:51]  And and I think he just loved showing up at a place in a Bentley right like then also being this down-to-earth dude, he'd like let people check it out and I remember at his he got remarried when I was in high school and he had a Rolls Royce at the time.
[00:34:04]  He had a Phantom.
[00:34:05]  And that was like, he had like, I think back then he only had like two cars at a time, but the Phantom he had was probably the sickest car he ever had.
[00:34:13]  I remember at his rehearsal dinner for the wedding, they're coming out of, I think it's called Majiano's down at West Shore Town.
[00:34:23]  Yeah, so they were coming out of there and the valet pulls up his Rolls Royce and everyone starts to realize who it is and he was pretty famous at the time.
[00:34:31]  He spends way too much time signing autographs for these kids on his Rolls Royce Phantom, signing it on them and letting them get in and letting their parents check it out.
[00:34:43]  It just became this big scene.
[00:34:44]  And everyone's like rolling their eyes, like all the family and stuff like oh, here he goes dude, that's awesome.
[00:34:48]  So this, like that would happen all the time.
[00:34:50]  But I think he enjoyed sharing, like like hey, this is what it's like you can just like when you have luxury.
[00:34:57]  And then he would like try to help people out and yeah, it's super.
[00:35:00]  Let them experience it too.
[00:35:02]  That's amazing.
[00:35:03]  You've uh, done your part to kind of like.
[00:35:05]  From that point in 2009, you you kind of like made a decision that you're gonna obviously make a huge turning point, but you kind of like carried out his legacy, or you kind of like It seems like you took the ball from there and you ran with it in your own way.
[00:35:17]  Yeah.
[00:35:18]  With the music, like with that new album.
[00:35:19]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:35:21]  I think I do find crazy, probably things that people wouldn't really understand unless you're like have my memories and stuff.
[00:35:30]  But like I feel crazy, like unexpected parallel vibes of his life at this age and my life now.
[00:35:39]  Really?
[00:35:40]  And how I always thought, no, I'm not going to become a pitch man.
[00:35:43]  I'm not going to be, I'm not going to do what he did.
[00:35:45]  I'm more of an artist, musician.
[00:35:46]  Yeah.
[00:35:47]  You know, he was an artist and a performer in his own way.
[00:35:49]  Yeah, totally.
[00:35:49]  It was like, it's super interesting.
[00:35:51]  Yeah.
[00:35:52]  And like, he wrote a lot of the commercials as well.
[00:35:53]  Did he really?
[00:35:54]  Yeah, that was like, because I mean, it was his pitch being distilled into like these little presentations.
[00:35:59]  So he was big on the wording of it and the demos.
[00:36:03]  So I always tried to like distance myself from it.
[00:36:05]  Like right after he died, I was like, no, I'm not going to go into that world.
[00:36:08]  Because like a couple people thought, oh, you should, you should fill his shoes and like be a pitch man and, you know, try to take over for products and stuff.
[00:36:14]  And like some people have asked me to, but nothing's really ever like excited me enough to do it.
[00:36:19]  But then I realized like, I'm.
[00:36:21]  I do all this independent touring and I've built up my little merch setup and my setup is essentially what he did.
[00:36:31]  I play music and that's my demo.
[00:36:34]  And then after the set, I'm selling merch and trying to get to the next city, which is exactly what he did, except that his demo and his merch were the same thing.
[00:36:43]  It was like he's literally demonstrating the product.
[00:36:45]  It was kind of all in one where mine's a little bit more removed.
[00:36:50]  It's more a performance and then you buy.
[00:36:52]  But that's kind of what his was too, I guess.
[00:36:55]  It makes me think that a lot of the times when I find myself alone in a city touring and like playing some weird show, some weird basement show or something, I think, man, my dad was probably in a situation like this where he's at some festival or not festival, like a convention that didn't really turn out the way he wanted.
[00:37:10]  He's just trying to make it to the next one, hope that it goes well.
[00:37:12]  I'm like, it kind of makes me feel connected to him, you know?
[00:37:15]  Definitely.
[00:37:15]  Did you already have the name Infinite Third by that point?
[00:37:19]  Or how did, when did you come up with that name and how did you come up?
[00:37:23]  Actually, in 2009, I was going by a different name and it was like so I look back and I just hate it because I think I was so caught up in my feelings, rightly so.
[00:37:33]  I was just like, holy shit, I'm just feeling this and it's like grief.
[00:37:40]  So somehow in my haze of 2009, I came up with the name Soft Words Traverse and it was just so dumb.
[00:37:50]  I don't like it.
[00:37:51]  But I think it was just like, I look back at a lot of that time as sort of like foggy, even though the music was really on point.
[00:37:58]  Like I feel like my life was kind of like foggy and I didn't really know who I was yet or like who I was becoming.
[00:38:05]  Well, it was just a transitional period.
[00:38:08]  So I went with that name for that first album.
[00:38:11]  And I think not even a year later, I realized that's not the name I want to go with.
[00:38:15]  And like I was, I had this tattoo.
[00:38:20]  I had this infinity symbol tattoo and I have a third symbol, you know, for the third.
[00:38:26]  I think I was just like sitting somewhere and I committed to like infinite third, like that should be the name, and it kind of gives off like a duality of what I feel in me and it also is kind of confusing and doesn't make sense like logically like infinite third.
[00:38:42]  So that's what I wanted in the name was something that was like a little intriguing but also like had personal meaning.
[00:38:47]  It seems like you built in a lot of meaning to it.
[00:38:49]  Yeah, it has like so many meanings built into it.
[00:38:52]  Yeah well, there's like there's.
[00:38:54]  Somebody came up to me recently and said that there's, There actually is like an infinite like.
[00:38:59]  I always thought the third interval in music makes sense because it's like the beginning of the minor Interval, like zero to three in the scale.
[00:39:06]  Yeah gives a certain vibe So I thought yeah people could take that and run with that thought But somebody told me that there is like a concept of a an infinitely recurring third interval Which I guess there could be anything with music right?
[00:39:18]  She went into this whole thing about like you got to look it up.
[00:39:21]  You got to check it out and like, I've even had people play on it in press, like reviewing my live sets or my albums, where They thought it was some sort of like physics term and like, and then it dawned on me that like, my music with the looping was set up to sort of always have infinite possibilities okay, continue on forever.
[00:39:43]  So yeah, loop is infinite.
[00:39:44]  Yeah, and like I can, I can keep progressing it and I I improvise so many of my sets that I don't want to play the same thing twice too much.
[00:39:51]  You know, I want it to always be a little different and let it be for that moment and not just something i'm like doing karaoke with.
[00:39:58]  Yeah, I always thought, because you painted the three on your forehead, that it was like a third eye.
[00:40:04]  Well yeah, I mean like that in it.
[00:40:05]  Yeah like yeah, that works too.
[00:40:07]  Mushrooms and do whatever.
[00:40:08]  Yeah, I mean one of my albums.
[00:40:11]  Uh, if you look it up, I was just revisiting it.
[00:40:13]  Actually it's a.
[00:40:14]  It's a six part collection of albums called the exploratory sessions and you can find them on my band camp.
[00:40:24]  Yeah um, they're all kind of like whatever.
[00:40:27]  They're all just super guitar based like spacey guitar um, improv improvisations that I then curated into these albums that look sort of each one has its own little concept yeah, and I started like revisiting like how that all went down and it was it was my first time like really diving into mushrooms really.
[00:40:45]  And yeah yeah, and it was a basically like five days at my apartment um, with a whole setup and with like a tv set up with like a vhs player that like glitches and like I was, I don't know I was.
[00:41:00]  I guess I was like trying to like, you know, expand my mind or like yeah, I was being invited to expand my mind and I basically just recorded and live streamed.
[00:41:08]  I have, I live streamed it on Ustream back then.
[00:41:11]  You're like, you stream.
[00:41:12]  You would have Ustream.
[00:41:13]  And then I remember how stupid it was is that there, it would be this like relaxing music that I'm live streaming.
[00:41:20]  And then like ads would just randomly interrupt it and you couldn't pick when they happen.
[00:41:25]  So I like really looking back, I would like never do that now.
[00:41:28]  I would never want like a live stream to just be interrupted.
[00:41:31]  Right.
[00:41:31]  Like in the middle of my set, just like stopping the music at a random point.
[00:41:34]  Play a commercial.
[00:41:35]  Yeah.
[00:41:35]  So it was basically just. three to five days of me not eating like huge doses of mushrooms, but just like a steady flow of it.
[00:41:46]  And you had to keep it going.
[00:41:47]  Eating some healthy food and like, yeah.
[00:41:50]  And I didn't intentionally do it, but it was all recorded and it was all live streamed.
[00:41:54]  So I took the recordings and started going back through them over a course of, I don't think they actually came out until like 2014.
[00:42:00]  And this was probably 2011.
[00:42:02]  So it took about three years to come back around and say, man, there's a lot of good stuff here.
[00:42:05]  How can I present this?
[00:42:07]  So I presented it as a six album collection.
[00:42:10]  called the exploratory session.
[00:42:11]  That's sick.
[00:42:12]  And so it took place over six days, you said?
[00:42:14]  Yeah, about, I think it was about five days, three to five days on and off of just streaming for hours.
[00:42:18]  And you were just streaming for hours.
[00:42:19]  On shrooms the whole time.
[00:42:22]  I guess.
[00:42:23]  I don't know.
[00:42:23]  I feel like when you do mushrooms, like, at least when I do, like, it, it's sort of just, I just need a little bit and it kind of, like, sets me off in a direction.

=== Finding Creative Clarity (15:37) ===

[00:42:33]  Yeah.
[00:42:33]  Like, I feel like you just kind of, like, teeter on the brink of yeah, like, I'm more of a micro-dose.
[00:42:38]  Yeah, you're not, like, tripping balls.
[00:42:39]  That's what I would do.
[00:42:41]  I feel like I would be, like, too scared to go through that fucking door.
[00:42:43]  Yeah.
[00:42:44]  I mean, yeah, I've had some bad experiences.
[00:42:48]  Have you?
[00:42:48]  In the past, yeah, but not, nothing like where I did anything crazy or just mental, like.
[00:42:54]  Where you did too much, you think?
[00:42:55]  No, not too much.
[00:42:56]  Okay.
[00:42:56]  Just like the wrong heads.
[00:42:57]  I always felt that when you do psychedelics, there's always a moment, at least for me, this has been true, to like really have the euphoric, like clarity that can come with that.
[00:43:11]  Yeah.
[00:43:11]  I always feel like I have to go through this period of like, accepting death and even if it's just like the concept of death yeah, and so maybe my mind gets all anxious and heavy and I think I'm gonna die, or I realize that I'm gonna die one day, or whatever version of that, and then like, through those clouds, there's like this huge clarity, but you kind of have to like get through it.
[00:43:35]  So that's happened with me a lot is that like okay, I've had to first break through the, the fear and then sort of like realize that there's like a clarity on the other end, yeah.
[00:43:45]  So yeah, I don't think I've ever had any like okay, super bad experiences, but I think there's always like a little bit of a teetering on like you know, like if you're gonna fall over on the other side of the fence yeah, that's what I'm afraid of.
[00:43:59]  Like I hear people that get like stuck in that, in that fucking state.
[00:44:02]  Well, I do think that some people do huge doses of these types of things and it triggers like it's like a losis and yeah, but it's something that they already dealing with or already have in their you know or something.
[00:44:16]  So I do think that that happens, but that's why I'm like I feel like I'm super careful about it and I try not to.
[00:44:23]  I don't take it lightly.
[00:44:24]  Like I've set it up as like a ritual if I ever do it.
[00:44:27]  Like I don't like to do it in like at parties or anything like that.
[00:44:31]  Right.
[00:44:31]  I'm not into that.
[00:44:32]  But I like to kind of treat it as like a spiritual experience.
[00:44:36]  Yeah, for sure.
[00:44:38]  And thankfully I've stuck with that for the most part.
[00:44:40]  I won't just take it if someone would give me something like that at like a festival or something.
[00:44:44]  I can't do that.
[00:44:45]  I've always been way too much of a pussy to try it.
[00:44:48]  Like if I smoke too much weed, I freak out.
[00:44:50]  Like I'm tripped.
[00:44:51]  Like if I eat like an edible, a brownie or something, I've had like.
[00:44:54]  I'll look in the mirror and be like, this has got to be what shrooms are like.
[00:44:58]  I think there is some overlap, you know, in some really good weed.
[00:45:02]  Yeah.
[00:45:03]  Yeah, they're close.
[00:45:04]  I'm going to try them soon.
[00:45:05]  I'm going to definitely try them soon.
[00:45:07]  Yeah, I would just stay hydrated and listen to some infinite third.
[00:45:11]  You'll be all right.
[00:45:12]  Actually, people have hit me up and said, my music has guided them through bad trips.
[00:45:17]  Really?
[00:45:19]  That's probably the best compliment.
[00:45:22]  I've forgotten all kinds of things about, like, Obviously people doing it like for their yoga classes or whatever putting on my music and then sometimes being like taking shrimps and doing yoga.
[00:45:32]  No, just doing yoga.
[00:45:33]  Different ways that people have put on my music in like odd settings.
[00:45:36]  I've heard my music's been played at like childbirths.
[00:45:40]  Really?
[00:45:40]  At home births.
[00:45:41]  Damn.
[00:45:42]  And I always found like the couple people who have reached out and said, hey, I went on a journey and like thankfully your music kind of anchored me throughout the trip.
[00:45:51]  And I'm like, yeah, I guess that's kind of what it's for.
[00:45:53]  You know, it's like, it's instrumental and stuff in the way that it is for a reason.
[00:45:58]  And it like has a certain abstraction for a reason.
[00:46:00]  It's not just like dance music or even though there are beats sometimes and stuff, it's not.
[00:46:05]  The purpose has always been like catharsis.
[00:46:09]  Okay.
[00:46:10]  Meaning like kind of going through like a transformational emotional experience.
[00:46:16]  Yeah.
[00:46:17]  My shows, I do set out to kind of go through that for myself.
[00:46:21]  And in turn, it kind of like lets other people feel that.
[00:46:24]  Ride it with you.
[00:46:25]  Yeah.
[00:46:26]  And so I do have people come up to me after shows and it's like they say that they had some, you know, crazy sort of like transformative moment.
[00:46:38]  Emotionally during the set and I and it's weird because when that happens it's usually I also had that same kind of experience while I was playing, like I was in a bad mood or I was like scared of something going on and like the music kind of like.
[00:46:49]  Let me be free of that.
[00:46:50]  So I do.
[00:46:52]  I do find this weird shamanistic quality of my music.
[00:46:57]  Like I wouldn't say that I'm a shaman.
[00:46:59]  I feel like that would be sort of arrogant to say.
[00:47:03]  But I think that I have to facilitate my music.
[00:47:06]  I'm not just performing it, usually I'm trying to facilitate something for everybody.
[00:47:11]  It's not just mindlessly.
[00:47:12]  Yeah.
[00:47:12]  So I try to be super mindful about it.
[00:47:14]  Yeah.
[00:47:14]  Like I don't want to just, you know, puke all over everybody and just push buttons and make noise.
[00:47:19]  Jerk off, you know, like it's a, it's an intentional thing for me.
[00:47:23]  And it's not always perfect and it's not always exactly what everybody needs.
[00:47:30]  But more often than not, it is what somebody needs at that time.
[00:47:34]  And that's also because it's what I, what I need, I think.
[00:47:37]  Yeah.
[00:47:37]  That's super fucking cool.
[00:47:40]  I wouldn't really want to make it if it didn't have meaning.
[00:47:42]  Right.
[00:47:43]  Yeah, for sure.
[00:47:44]  It keeps me it's how I knew that it should be my career and that it doesn't make sense that somebody would make a career out of abstract, experimental, ambient music.
[00:47:53]  Right.
[00:47:53]  The whole time I just knew.
[00:47:55]  I'm super rich probably off it.
[00:47:56]  Yeah, I don't know.
[00:47:57]  But then I realized over time that it's not really about the genre or about the specifics.
[00:48:03]  It's more like people this guy's fucking us so hard with this fucking blower.
[00:48:12]  That's all right.
[00:48:12]  Yeah, fuck.
[00:48:13]  It's okay.
[00:48:13]  It's okay.
[00:48:13]  We'll treat it as like well, now that we're mentioning it, I don't know what they're handling.
[00:48:19]  I got to figure out something.
[00:48:21]  I don't know.
[00:48:22]  We'll figure something out later.
[00:48:23]  Honestly, I should sample that.
[00:48:25]  It's part of the moment.
[00:48:27]  We're just going to live with it.
[00:48:29]  Anyway, I think what I was trying to say was that I slowly realized over time, like, I don't want to limit myself mentally to say that I make some obscure music when I really all that matters with any kind of art is that you're connected to it and you care about it.
[00:48:44]  And you grow it like a garden, not just a fucking product.
[00:48:48]  So I find that I'm being, I'm realizing more and more that it almost doesn't matter.
[00:48:54]  As long as I believe in what I'm doing, it's going to work and people are going to connect with it.
[00:48:58]  So like I've been able to make way more money than I thought I would from, like that's why I don't do as much of the stuff that I don't want to do.
[00:49:04]  Right.
[00:49:04]  And I do more like gigs and shows that are my music.
[00:49:07]  But I've had to get through a lot of periods of risk, financial risk of like, I don't want to take this really intense gig that I would make a lot of money on, but it would just kind of drain me for weeks.
[00:49:23]  I had to start saying no to those, the easier money or the more guaranteed money and say, no, I think a show is going to come up.
[00:49:30]  And I had to get through a lot of periods of borrowing and just doing what I can to get by.
[00:49:37]  And then now I feel like it's my career.
[00:49:39]  It's like a huge mental struggle.
[00:49:41]  It takes a lot of a lot of courage or a lot of balls to trade.
[00:49:47]  You know, most people just trade their dreams for securities and like, okay, this is going to be more, you know, I'm going to make more money.
[00:49:52]  I'm going to be able to raise a family, pay my mortgage if I do this and just dabble in this.
[00:49:57]  But it takes so much.
[00:49:58]  Like, nope, not, that's why so few people do it, dive into the thing that they love doing that makes no money.
[00:50:05]  You know, it's, it's a, yeah.
[00:50:08]  I mean, it's not even, it's not even really like the way the, the way the world's set up and the way capitalism is set up.
[00:50:13]  Like, it's almost like, It's already things are stacked against you and some things are stacked against people more than others and some people have more stacked against them than others.
[00:50:22]  So I feel that I had a lot of a leg up just by getting to see my dad's rise and learning from him, getting the little bit of post-mortem support from him financially, which was like enough to invest in some gear.
[00:50:38]  Yeah.
[00:50:39]  Like, you know, whatever.
[00:50:41]  There was that, but it wasn't like a trust fund.
[00:50:43]  And so I definitely have those kind of head starts, but I also feel like.
[00:50:49]  I didn't take the easy route of like just making trying to make music that's commercially viable.
[00:50:54]  Right.
[00:50:55]  Just for the dollar.
[00:50:56]  Mine really hasn't been and only until recently do I see that it could be there is a path for me to be abundant with it financially, but it's hard work.
[00:51:08]  It's like you got to convince people why that like why it's why it's good or why it's worth listening to or why it's worth booking for your gig or your festival.
[00:51:17]  And I'm sure that's hard because a lot of people don't get that type of music and you know it's hard for them like you're the person booking and stuff to relate to shit like that.
[00:51:25]  Well, thankfully I'm getting better at showing it and explaining it and collecting the right videos.
[00:51:30]  And yeah, I think it's especially doing it live, I'm sure helps.
[00:51:36]  Yeah, but I think I can kind of see it and understand what's going on.
[00:51:39]  That's what I was going to say is that I think it's because once people see it or experience it, then it's kind of like unquestionable what it is, but it's really hard to describe.
[00:51:47]  Like, oh yeah, it's this guy just like yeah, you just play some stuff.
[00:51:49]  Pressing a bunch of buttons with his guitar, and then like, it's also really emotional, and like people people sit on the floor with them sometimes and like, it's all really like sounds weird, but once you're there, it's just like it makes perfect sense.
[00:52:01]  And, you know, there's no reason to question it once you see it.
[00:52:04]  But that's the hard part is like just getting out there more and more so people experience it.
[00:52:09]  Yeah.
[00:52:09]  And you're also, I mean, you're also super fortunate that you didn't have, you know, a lot of people have parents that are just like, don't waste your time doing this.
[00:52:16]  You got to go do this.
[00:52:18]  This is going to make you money.
[00:52:19]  You need to go fucking join the Navy or go work at a bank.
[00:52:22]  Go to college.
[00:52:23]  So you can actually be a functioning.
[00:52:25]  Yeah.
[00:52:26]  Human.
[00:52:26]  You know what I mean a functioning part of society.
[00:52:28]  Well, my dad was more practical right that he would like.
[00:52:31]  He would kind of say like yeah, you still got to get this degree.
[00:52:35]  And like yeah, maybe one day you'll be able to do stuff with music.
[00:52:37]  But yeah, I hear where he was coming from.
[00:52:39]  I was just a kid, you know.
[00:52:41]  I wouldn't think that I could have done it back then either.
[00:52:43]  But little do you know that, like his death was the thing that triggered me into being able to really do it seriously.
[00:52:51]  But my mom was just, she still is, she's like, she's like the number one fan and she just Always, even back in high school, like I would play music really loud in the next room over, and she'd just be like, I love it.
[00:53:04]  I love to hear it.
[00:53:04]  Really?
[00:53:05]  Yeah, it's awesome.
[00:53:05]  And so, yeah, so I was really lucky to have parents that didn't just shut it down.
[00:53:12]  Oh, hell yeah.
[00:53:13]  Yeah, and I did have like friends that kind of like shut it down, like ignored it or like thought that it was stupid.
[00:53:18]  But thankfully, once you get out into the world, like a lot of people will like move away from where they're from or something.
[00:53:25]  And like you kind of find people that like get you in a new light.
[00:53:30]  You know what I mean?
[00:53:31]  Like that kind of thing where like you can kind of like reinvent yourself.
[00:53:34]  I think that kind of happened for me when I moved to Florida.
[00:53:36]  I was able to start reinventing myself, but it took a long time.
[00:53:39]  Hell yeah.
[00:53:40]  Have you ever thought about collaborating with other artists?
[00:53:43]  I think one of the first things I mentioned to you earlier was this hip-hop artist from St. Pete.
[00:53:47]  It would be so cool to hear samples and loops collaborating with these vocalists that come on.
[00:53:54]  Well, I do it all the time, really.
[00:53:56]  Mouth Council is strictly collaborative.
[00:53:59]  It's never just me.
[00:54:00]  Okay, so explain exactly what Mouth Council is.
[00:54:01]  So Mouth Council is, I mentioned it earlier, the loop station that I use, the RC505 by Boss.
[00:54:09]  Before that existed, I had started doing this thing where I would, I'd be playing music myself and then like somebody would be around, like a friend or something, and they'd start singing along and I'd be like, I'd want to include them.
[00:54:20]  So I would just like hand them a microphone and then loop what they were doing along with my loops.
[00:54:25]  And it was like fun.
[00:54:26]  It was like including them instead of just me playing at them.
[00:54:29]  And then as that went on, like maybe I did it with like two friends.
[00:54:35]  And at one point it was just like, hey, let's do the thing where we just like, we loop our voices.
[00:54:41]  And so we started kind of like having fun with that with like a really primitive looper that just did one thing like start and stop.
[00:54:47]  So there were no effects or anything cool that I could do.
[00:54:50]  And I would just keep layering over it.
[00:54:52]  So it turned into this thing where some friends would come over and we'd like sit around and I would loop all their voices and we would all just kind of like do goofy things and it'd become maybe like somewhat musical.
[00:55:07]  So once that RC505 came out, I was like, I need that.
[00:55:10]  Like they announced it and I was like, that's what I need for this activity.
[00:55:13]  And I got on like the waiting list for the pre-orders and I think I got it like the month it came out.
[00:55:18]  Really?
[00:55:19]  And so I just dove into it and I was like, let's do this.
[00:55:23]  And one of my friends, one of the original friends who did that with me, at one point, he doesn't even remember saying it.
[00:55:29]  He was like, I love that.
[00:55:30]  I love when we do that.
[00:55:31]  It's like, it's like some sort of mouth counsel.
[00:55:33]  And I was like, that's what we should call it.
[00:55:35]  He doesn't even remember saying it, but I know that that was where the name came from.
[00:55:38]  That one little comment.
[00:55:40]  So you had never seen anybody do anything like this before?
[00:55:42]  Oh, people loop, you know.
[00:55:44]  But in the way you do it, in like a circle where if you pass the microphone.
[00:55:47]  Honestly, it was just a really natural thing.
[00:55:49]  It wasn't even that intentional.
[00:55:51]  It just kind of happened.
[00:55:51]  And it was like people would naturally want to sit in a circle.
[00:55:53]  It was like sitting around a campfire or something.
[00:55:55]  People want to do that.
[00:55:57]  People want to sit in a circle.
[00:55:58]  It's so fascinating.
[00:55:59]  I mean, I've seen like videos of like, I've watched like little clips of it before.
[00:56:04]  It never really like captured me until I watched the full process of what happens and what it sounds like.
[00:56:10]  Freaking amazing man.
[00:56:12]  Yeah, so back then it was a little still pretty primitive.
[00:56:14]  I would just kind of we would do it and like hopefully it would turn into something cool and like um, it kind of fit in as like a cool thing it shows in between bands or something.
[00:56:23]  I started doing that and then I think some, some point maybe, like I would say, four or five years ago, probably five years ago, it got.
[00:56:29]  I got really good at the pedal just just from from using it so much.
[00:56:34]  I got intuitively good at it and kind of realized like this is a real thing that i'm doing, like I should.
[00:56:40]  I should like focus on this and make it a project and I turn it into the Mouth Council, like officially, more and more, and I would brand it and I made a logo and stuff and um still, that's that's what I do is like I look at my musical path as like half Infinite Third, half Mouth Council.
[00:56:56]  They're two completely different offerings but they're kind of the same in that they're opposite.
[00:57:02]  They're um, Infinite Third is like me looping with myself and like super internal and like introverted, and then Mouth Council is me looping with everyone else.
[00:57:12]  Right, The audience is the performer.
[00:57:15]  Yeah.
[00:57:16]  And I love that.
[00:57:17]  When I'm on a stage, I get to bring people up on the stage.
[00:57:19]  And I just always trust that somebody is going to want to be the center of attention.
[00:57:24]  Of course.
[00:57:26]  I love it because it lets me highlight other people instead of just making it about myself all the time.
[00:57:34]  In some ways, I'm the facilitator and the leader of it.
[00:57:38]  But, you know, I love the moments where it's more about someone just like gets up there and can really sing and they just kill it.
[00:57:44]  Yeah.
[00:57:44]  And I'm still mixing it like a badass over here.
[00:57:46]  Like I admit that I do some cool things sometimes, but I think that some of it's so like playful and accidental that very organic.
[00:57:54]  Yeah.
[00:57:54]  I try not to like freestyling.
[00:57:56]  I try not to let it get to my head because it's just like it's this like energy.
[00:57:59]  It's not it just comes together.
[00:58:00]  It's like it's because people are into it.
[00:58:02]  I can feed off of it and just start turning knobs and stuff, you know, so it's not like some genius, you know, thing that I've like.

=== Embracing Live Performance Mistakes (05:29) ===

[00:58:10]  Written out and structured it's yeah totally the opposite of that It's like I don't ever think about it.
[00:58:14]  I don't plan it on purpose because when I do it kind of kind of like get in my head and like yeah Have you ever thought of doing like an album like a mout like where you like where you do sequentially because obviously once you record them You don't mess with them that they are what they are right?
[00:58:26]  That's what's so cool about yeah for the most part.
[00:58:28]  They kind of like live how they're produced live is how they end up.
[00:58:31]  Yeah, there are some good live audio recordings that I've released on band camp and stuff.
[00:58:35]  Oh really like yeah, just like some decent, like song by song live recordings, like I think it'd be a cool concept.
[00:58:42]  Like there's no mastering or there's no editing of the sounds of the audio, like if the concept of the project was just like, I'm gonna bring in track one, I'm gonna bring in these people, track two, I'm gonna bring in these people, and then I'm gonna record it and that's it.
[00:58:54]  Well, I told you I really want to do like a like a series, almost like roundtable discussion style of like, because because then from that, so I'd have guests maybe, like you guys would be guests on my thing and we would talk and make music together and I feel like from that, why wouldn't the audio of the songs be an album?
[00:59:12]  You know right right I I, I see a version of that that you know becomes.
[00:59:17]  I already, I already look at it as a band, like it's a band that has no boundaries, like everyone's in it yeah.
[00:59:24]  So I always tell people, like you're in the band now, like yeah, you're part of it, so mouth council is literally just me and everyone else, and it's cool because there's so many possibilities.
[00:59:33]  Yeah, with that, with that idea, like it's just and it's it's infinite yeah.
[00:59:37]  Third yeah hey, were you on uh Drew Grabo show doing that?
[00:59:42]  Was that you?
[00:59:44]  I've heard it multiple times on there, but I didn't know.
[00:59:47]  Yeah.
[00:59:47]  Who it was.
[00:59:47]  Drew's awesome.
[00:59:48]  That's sick.
[00:59:49]  I go on there maybe every two, three months.
[00:59:52]  Yeah.
[00:59:52]  Really?
[00:59:53]  I just heard it recently, like not that long ago.
[00:59:56]  I know I did.
[00:59:56]  I drive home from work and I hear, I would listen to them on the way home every day.
[00:59:59]  I've heard it a couple of times.
[01:00:00]  Yeah.
[01:00:01]  I know I heard it.
[01:00:01]  We, he went and got all these like, like staff of the radio chain.
[01:00:07]  Yeah.
[01:00:07]  Yeah.
[01:00:07]  And like brought them in.
[01:00:09]  Yeah.
[01:00:09]  And everybody made a sound.
[01:00:10]  Yeah.
[01:00:10]  And they passed it around.
[01:00:11]  And, you know, there's always like a video going of, of their live stream.
[01:00:14]  Yeah.
[01:00:15]  And, and Drew always raps.
[01:00:17]  Yeah.
[01:00:17]  He does.
[01:00:17]  He's a pretty good rapper.
[01:00:18]  Yeah.
[01:00:18]  He is pretty good.
[01:00:19]  He just freestyles.
[01:00:20]  Yeah.
[01:00:20]  And, yeah.
[01:00:21]  I love Drew.
[01:00:22]  That's it.
[01:00:22]  It's always a great time going on that show.
[01:00:24]  Could we do it if we had one more person there?
[01:00:26]  Like, one, two, three.
[01:00:27]  We could do it like this.
[01:00:29]  You need more, though.
[01:00:29]  It's just like the vibe's better when it's like maybe more.
[01:00:32]  Five people.
[01:00:33]  I think that's like my magic number is like five to eight.
[01:00:35]  Okay.
[01:00:36]  And also like if it gets too many in the actual circle.
[01:00:39]  Yeah.
[01:00:39]  Like I like there to be like a circle and then like people standing around or out in the crowd.
[01:00:43]  Yeah.
[01:00:44]  But once you get to like 10 or 12, it can get a little weird in that some people don't.
[01:00:50]  Some people freeze up.
[01:00:51]  Yeah.
[01:00:52]  And I totally promote.
[01:00:53]  passing it if you don't want to do anything.
[01:00:55]  Yeah.
[01:00:55]  Somebody's going to like judge you because you couldn't like figure it out.
[01:00:57]  Make a sound.
[01:00:58]  Sometimes somebody will fuck it up.
[01:01:00]  Somebody will like put in some, they'll be like, they'll, they'll feel, I mean, you don't want to say it.
[01:01:03]  No, they're, they're, it fucks up the energy.
[01:01:05]  I would say sometimes there's someone that kind of just don't catch the fuck up.
[01:01:09]  Goes into business for themselves and just like screams into the mic and like tries to, a plug, plugs their website.
[01:01:14]  Yeah.
[01:01:14]  Yeah.
[01:01:14]  And I'm actually kind of down for it.
[01:01:16]  Like I, I can totally, I have enough control that like I could cut off the mic if I really need to if they start saying some obscene shit.
[01:01:22]  Yeah.
[01:01:22]  Yeah.
[01:01:23]  But also like sometimes someone will do something really shitty into the mic and it's like distorted and weird and I'll still like tweak it enough to bring it back and make it like a funny song and then I'll delete it.
[01:01:36]  So it don't make them feel like left out or like they're like assholes for making a weird sound.
[01:01:42]  But sometimes it'll go around and not enough people will have done something like musical.
[01:01:49]  It's almost like it's adding up the wrong layers.
[01:01:51]  Not wrong, but like the layers that don't mesh well.
[01:01:54]  And then sometimes, a lot of times my contribution is that By the time it comes back around to me, I'll add like a heavy snare or something and makes it like groove differently.
[01:02:03]  Where some people won't do that that whole time.
[01:02:05]  So we're sitting there waiting for everyone to kind of get through their piece.
[01:02:07]  Yeah.
[01:02:08]  So I try to like mitigate that by not having too many people.
[01:02:11]  But there's inevitable times where there's like 15 people in the circle.
[01:02:15]  Sometimes I'll just like ask for the mic back real quick and I'll say I'll give it back to them.
[01:02:18]  So I can add some hi-hats or something.
[01:02:19]  Yeah.
[01:02:20]  But yeah, like one of the weirdest gigs that I do is First Night, St. Pete, the New Year's Eve celebration.
[01:02:28]  Oh, yeah.
[01:02:28]  The family-friendly New Year's Eve celebration at Straub Park.
[01:02:31]  Yeah, downtown They hire me to come do like a little mouth council zone and last year It got a little crazy because it was just kids.
[01:02:41]  It was just all kids.
[01:02:42]  Oh god.
[01:02:43]  Yeah, and like maybe a handful of like people who might have been drunk stumbling by Yeah, but it was kids like oh, but like it's crazy with kids kids are great kids are better than drunk people sometimes like kids are like They're uninhibited like drunk people are but kids are actually pretty creative and like what do you mean when you say kids are we talking like like all ages like this was there was a girl there a little girl Right next to me she stood up.
[01:03:07]  She was like she you could tell she was just like Mesmerized by what was going on.
[01:03:11]  I think she was probably three.
[01:03:12]  Okay, like probably the youngest that's like voluntarily walked up and done it and I gave her the microphone and she starts singing Wow, it's like it wasn't like Whitney Houston singing, but it was like it was like really Listenable singing and everyone was cheering and she probably didn't even understand that they were what's going on like it was it was that kind of moment and then like I found out her brother was sitting right next to her And he was also like having a blast doing like kind of like almost rapping,

=== Welcoming Young Fans to Stage (05:40) ===

[01:03:40]  but it was like scat in a way.
[01:03:44]  So we're going around and this was just like nonstop.
[01:03:46]  There was no structure to it.
[01:03:47]  I wasn't limiting who could come in.
[01:03:49]  So we had like 25 kids around.
[01:03:51]  They're all trying to get their moment.
[01:03:53]  And like everyone was having fun, but musically it was a mess.
[01:03:57]  At times it was, you couldn't listen to it.
[01:03:59]  It was just annoying.
[01:04:00]  It was just noise.
[01:04:01]  But everyone had fun.
[01:04:02]  Yeah.
[01:04:03]  That's all that matters sometimes.
[01:04:05]  I want to play one clip so we can add it into the podcast so we can like have a oh, this is the is this the one?
[01:04:10]  It's the one we did with the mayor.
[01:04:12]  He wasn't in it.
[01:04:12]  He was watching, though.
[01:04:13]  It's the mayor's lounge, Mayor Christman.
[01:04:15]  Oh, okay.
[01:04:17]  I got to pick four friends to come and be the performance on this web series called Mayor's Lounge.
[01:04:22]  Okay.
[01:04:23]  And that's right in St. Pete?
[01:04:25]  Yeah, this was at the Hideaway on Central.
[01:04:28]  That's sick.
[01:04:28]  So you got four people plus you, and you're like beatboxing.
[01:04:32]  Yeah.
[01:04:33]  To start it out, just to get the beat vibe going.
[01:04:35]  And I strategically placed these four people because I knew Zach right here.
[01:04:40]  We kind of come with like a funny but musical, musically good sound.
[01:04:47]  Yeah, that's it.
[01:04:48]  That's like his specialty, one of his specialties.
[01:04:52]  Oh, my shit's going green like that.
[01:04:54]  And then, yeah, I had my friend Senyo, who's like.
[01:05:00]  He's actually the lead singer of Bang Rang from Tampa, so I got him to get out there.
[01:05:04]  You can see how sweaty I am, which happens a lot.
[01:05:09]  I've broken.
[01:05:10]  loopers because I've sweated into the faders.
[01:05:12]  That's my third machine.
[01:05:13]  Oh shit.
[01:05:13]  That's my third machine.
[01:05:14]  Yeah.
[01:05:15]  Because the water will mess it up.
[01:05:21]  Could you imagine like Rod Wave sitting there like singing one of his songs and then somebody else beatboxing and him mixing it and then like the girl throwing in her stuff.
[01:05:28]  It's always really special when there's a rapper that knows how to freestyle.
[01:05:32]  Oh, they build this beat and then I have a way of mixing once they start rapping that cuts it out at the right times.
[01:05:39]  I'll put like an octave on his voice to make it like satanic, you know, for like certain lines and stuff.
[01:05:44]  And like that's my favorite thing is when someone just goes off and then I can like put a filter on and like cut out the beat at the right moment and bring it back.
[01:05:51]  Yeah.
[01:05:52]  Because I kind of vibe off that person.
[01:05:54]  Doing that?
[01:05:54]  Yeah definitely, if you had like a you gotta link rod it wave up with them.
[01:05:57]  Yeah, if you had the rod wave and then like a death metal, like a corpse grinder right yeah, like that's a, that'd be a beautiful.
[01:06:04]  Yeah, Dn Saint yeah, do do mouth counsel with me all the time really, and they're amazing and yeah, they're like two of my go-to people for if I need to make like a really good musical mouth counsel, because they come through with like some catchy hooks and yeah, they're both really good rappers and they'll just kind of like capture the moment with me.
[01:06:22]  That's sick and there's a lot of people like that.
[01:06:24]  But yeah, you know, we have our OG CREW.
[01:06:26]  I think that I I would hit up for things like this for the mayor and stuff, and yeah, what kind of like?
[01:06:31]  So what kind of has this led to?
[01:06:33]  Like you've said you've done like a bunch of good corporate.
[01:06:35]  It's like led to like team building activities for brand yeah, companies.
[01:06:39]  Just yesterday I did it um, for a bank, for their management party um, at like 10 a.m I was doing mouth council with a bunch of people just form a bunch of bankers.
[01:06:48]  Yeah, they were super into it and it was like like the, the more like higher ups were super into it, trying to get everybody to to like let loose, and um, It was really fun.
[01:06:59]  You'd be surprised there aren't too many situations where people aren't down to clown, you know?
[01:07:06]  Right.
[01:07:06]  Yeah.
[01:07:07]  Because it's such a super it's super immersive.
[01:07:10]  Yeah, and I try to let people know that you can't do anything wrong.
[01:07:15]  You're not going to ruin it if you do something weird.
[01:07:18]  We're just going to keep moving.
[01:07:19]  Yeah.
[01:07:20]  And so it's imperfect in that way.
[01:07:22]  So it doesn't make you intimidated and think that you have to be American Idol to participate.
[01:07:29]  Right.
[01:07:30]  Yeah, it's like my my comfort zone is it in there and like having to just answer to the moment of like People are looking for this to be musical.
[01:07:40]  Let's make it into music and like take chances and I do a lot of like flipping the beat and like raising the tempo Yeah, slowly and like getting turn it into something else, right?
[01:07:50]  Like I think that's kind of what sets it off I do take credit for that like my job is to not make it just loops right over and over again.
[01:07:59]  It's changing it up and bringing things together.
[01:08:01]  Switching it up and adding effects in.
[01:08:03]  Having structure to the songs, ending the songs at the right time so that it feels like a complete song.
[01:08:09]  And so it's not just like goes on forever and ever.
[01:08:11]  There is a time where I'll feel like I can go for like 20 minutes and I just do because it's a party or something.
[01:08:16]  People just want the music to keep going.
[01:08:19]  And on the flip side, when I do Infinite Third, it's like a four-hour-long song sometimes.
[01:08:24]  Not a four-hour-long song, but it's a seamless song to song.
[01:08:28]  They all kind of blend into each other.
[01:08:30]  I don't really stop for applause that much.
[01:08:34]  Even when I do I like to just kind of like oh really you just like make some kind of like long piece and you chop it up into tracks No for infinite third and just for my performances.
[01:08:42]  It's like it's happening forever like there's like little droney interludes that connect every song I try not to make it like okay now a song's over like everyone's never just quiet and starts again.
[01:08:52]  Yeah, so I like to kind of keep the, the hypnosis of it going so that it doesn't kind of kill the vibe.
[01:08:59]  And then Also, like I just it creates a really reflective environment at the right setting.
[01:09:05]  Like when I play for like say, a grassroots KAVA House for like four hours which i'm doing on, you know, an upcoming friday yeah, I just kind of install myself in there and people just come and go and hang out and talk or not talk and do whatever, and it's it's a really good environment for that.

=== Preserving Memories Through Photos (03:58) ===

[01:09:20]  So when it, when it stops, people are like still kind of in the zone and they're ready to just like keep getting in the zone.
[01:09:25]  So just keep it going.
[01:09:27]  And then, what's the other thing I want to talk about?
[01:09:28]  Oh yeah, the bill.
[01:09:29]  Oh yeah, this Billymaze.org, yeah.
[01:09:31]  So tell me, what is it true that this was?
[01:09:35]  We were talking about earlier.
[01:09:36]  This was the website that you had created for your dad not, not quite.
[01:09:39]  What I mean is that um, I was the only person in his circle at the time of his death, or the the years before his death that said hey, why don't you have like a website and why don't you like have a presence where you can talk to people who are like fans of you and like why aren't we connecting with these people more right right, you know sending them autograph photos and stuff, and because he was big into that, he would carry around autograph photos are you serious case?
[01:10:05]  So like people would just get a picture with him.
[01:10:07]  He was always down to pose for a picture at the airport.
[01:10:10]  So I would travel with him and we'd have to stop every minute to take a photo.
[01:10:14]  I would take a lot of the photos and get their information and send it to him.
[01:10:18]  At the time, it wasn't so connected all the time.
[01:10:21]  But he would bust out these photos that he would sign and give them to people.
[01:10:26]  It was kind of a bonus.
[01:10:27]  It was kind of over the top in a way.
[01:10:30]  He loved it.
[01:10:32]  I always noticed that he would actually care about the people that were interested in meeting him.
[01:10:39]  There'd be a second of like, yeah, I'm that guy, blah, blah, blah, take a picture.
[01:10:43]  And then he'd be like, what do you do?
[01:10:44]  And like, I would see him get into all these like really genuine conversations with just your everyday person who just was a fan for a minute.
[01:10:52]  And like, that was something I really looked up to.
[01:10:55]  Yeah.
[01:10:55]  Just in who he was as a person.
[01:10:57]  Cause he was kind of like that with everybody.
[01:10:58]  He would on the on the set, he would he would talk to like all the crew members and like he was never like too good or anything.
[01:11:05]  Yeah.
[01:11:06]  He was just kind of like one of the one of the guys.
[01:11:10]  Yeah.
[01:11:10]  So anyway, I always thought, well, why wouldn't we connect digitally and like make it happen?
[01:11:14]  And so he kind of like agreed to that by the time he died.
[01:11:17]  And I was basically envisioning what it would be and where we would put all the videos and how we would do it and stuff.
[01:11:23]  And like a welcome video, like, hey, welcome to my website.
[01:11:25]  This is 2009.
[01:11:26]  So you're like the Billy Mays creative director.
[01:11:28]  Yeah.
[01:11:28]  I would have been.
[01:11:29]  I was.
[01:11:30]  And I guess, yeah, now I actually am.
[01:11:31]  Now you literally are.
[01:11:33]  So what I mean is that like when he died, I knew that I wanted to do some nonprofit work like under his name as a tribute, but I never really knew how.
[01:11:43]  And like.
[01:11:44]  I didn't really have the resources to just like start doing charity.
[01:11:48]  I didn't have like tons of money to donate and stuff like that.
[01:11:50]  So there wasn't anything that was obvious.
[01:11:52]  So there were a couple iterations of me trying to figure out how to do this nonprofit thing.
[01:11:57]  And then over the years, I think I became more mature and I learned things and I kind of decided that I can tell his story, kind of like pay tribute, have like these fun, you know, posts and meme collections.
[01:12:12]  Yeah.
[01:12:13]  There's a whole page on this website, BillyMaze.org, that's dedicated to memes.
[01:12:18]  Yeah.
[01:12:18]  Like people tag me in memes all the time and I just like rip them and put them up here.
[01:12:22]  Yeah.
[01:12:22]  There's a ton of Billy Maze memes.
[01:12:24]  And I want people to send me them because they still exist and it's so funny that like, so funny that people are still making them.
[01:12:31]  You know that they've even evolved since his death in some weird way.
[01:12:34]  But um and and, just like references when people see him referenced in something and like he's been in he's, he was on, he was in uh, Better Call Saul like he really.
[01:12:47]  That came out like years after his death really.
[01:12:49]  There was an episode where um, the Spit, The Breaking Bad spin-off, yeah, Mike Airman Trout is breaking into someone's house, like the classic type of Breaking Bad scene where you know an assassin's coming in like silently into someone's house, but like there's a tv playing.
[01:13:04]  Yeah.
[01:13:05]  And so the TV was playing and my dad's commercial was on.
[01:13:08]  No shit.
[01:13:08]  They had to like get it cleared and stuff.
[01:13:10]  That's sick.
[01:13:11]  And yeah, so there's like moments like that.
[01:13:13]  He's in a couple movies like that in that capacity where he's just on the TV in the movie.

=== Planning a Legacy Event (05:46) ===

[01:13:18]  But yeah, it's so any of that, I definitely like welcome.
[01:13:24]  Yeah.
[01:13:24]  Oh, yeah.
[01:13:24]  Because it's like I'm like, I'm the sole Billy Mays historian, you know?
[01:13:27]  Yeah.
[01:13:28]  I'm trying to keep track of where he appeared and what happened and what work he did.
[01:13:33]  And I'm still trying to find all his commercials.
[01:13:35]  There's like a million of them.
[01:13:36]  Oh, yeah.
[01:13:36]  I'm trying to find them all.
[01:13:37]  And.
[01:13:37]  A lot of them only exist on tape.
[01:13:40]  Really?
[01:13:41]  On VHS tape somewhere?
[01:13:42]  Yeah, like in a vault.
[01:13:44]  If you were to ballpark a number on how many commercials he's made, how many would you say?
[01:13:49]  Hundreds, thousands?
[01:13:50]  Yeah, I mean, if you really break it down into the different versions of each one, it could get into the high hundreds, early thousands maybe.
[01:13:59]  If there's a 30-second one, a minute one, a 90-second one.
[01:14:01]  Right, right.
[01:14:03]  There was all that stuff, but I would say hundreds.
[01:14:06]  And product-wise, I think, I don't know, like 60, 50, 60 products.
[01:14:12]  I don't know.
[01:14:13]  There's a big list.
[01:14:14]  Maybe not that many, but it's a lot when you look at it.
[01:14:16]  And some of them were bigger than others.
[01:14:20]  So I eventually realized that I can combine those two things, like paying tribute to him and kind of having the fun of sharing this stuff with people who still care about him and also do nonprofit work.
[01:14:35]  So back at the beginning of 2019, I connected with my friend Mike, who owns the Dunedin brewery in Dunedin, Florida.
[01:14:46]  Okay, it's like Florida's oldest microbrewery.
[01:14:52]  He had always been down to do something like this and we finally just like decided what it would be and it would be a tribute beer, because they had done a few other types of tribute beers over the years.
[01:15:01]  Yeah, and so it.
[01:15:04]  It also has meaning, because my dad actually lived in Dunedin for quite a while, oh cool.
[01:15:07]  So they brewed this sort of orange IPA and we just decided to call it the Billy Mays ipa and it was released on the 10 year anniversary of his death, really june 28th 2019 and for the first run, we only did it as a on tap at the brewery.
[01:15:25]  Yeah, and like a few other local places had a keg of it, just like for fun.
[01:15:29]  But um, when you go to the tasting room at the brewery which is awesome, by the way they have like amazing food.
[01:15:35]  I've never been there.
[01:15:36]  I need to go there.
[01:15:36]  All their beers are amazing and I don't drink like tons of beer, but i've never had like a bad beer from Dunedin brewery yeah yeah, so On June 28th, 2019, we dropped the beer.
[01:15:47]  And in the tasting room, every pint that you buy, $1.50 from each purchase, it hasn't even happened yet, is getting donated to the Laundry Project, which is a charity that I chose to partner with, which is Tampa-based.
[01:16:01]  And I thought it was relevant because of the laundry thing.
[01:16:03]  And they do free laundry days pop-ups at laundromats all in different cities and communities.
[01:16:10]  Nice.
[01:16:11]  And pay for everyone's laundry?
[01:16:12]  Yeah, I volunteer with them sometimes.
[01:16:13]  It's so awesome.
[01:16:14]  They just like, they get a team there.
[01:16:16]  They bring soap.
[01:16:18]  Quarters.
[01:16:19]  That's why coffee and they just advertise that, like you can come today and get your laundry, free laundry.
[01:16:24]  So it costs a lot to to do, like tons of people, but you realize how, how efficient you have to be.
[01:16:30]  Like they have to plan it out so that, like everyone's keeping track of who's stuck what.
[01:16:35]  So they put names on the things so that it can keep going, because it gets pretty filled pretty fast and you still want to get as many as you can.
[01:16:41]  It's so it's a really fun time and so um, we just finished the first batch of the IPA.
[01:16:47]  Um, and they're working on the second batch right now and we're about to make a, the first donation to the laundry.
[01:16:51]  So cool, I don't know how much it's going to be.
[01:16:53]  So we can literally go to the brewery and buy it.
[01:16:54]  Not right now.
[01:16:55]  It's sold out right now.
[01:16:56]  It's sold out.
[01:16:57]  Yeah.
[01:16:57]  So the first batch sold out, I think, maybe like last month or something.
[01:17:01]  So it lasts about three months or something like that.
[01:17:04]  And so we're working on what we're going to do for the second batch and if we're going to try to make it different.
[01:17:08]  Might do cans.
[01:17:09]  Might do a can release.
[01:17:10]  That would be sick, man.
[01:17:13]  So I would like to take it further.
[01:17:14]  Each can have different art on it.
[01:17:16]  A different Billy Mays meme on there.
[01:17:18]  Oh, my God.
[01:17:19]  Dude, that would be sick.
[01:17:20]  That would be sick.
[01:17:22]  I'm into that.
[01:17:23]  That's cool.
[01:17:25]  I want to do like a big event.
[01:17:26]  It's like a can-release fundraiser that has bands and shirts and just auctions and art auctions and stuff.
[01:17:34]  I own a lot of Billy May's art that people have made over the years.
[01:17:37]  Really?
[01:17:37]  Oh, yeah.
[01:17:38]  Like cool little paintings and stuff.
[01:17:40]  Big paintings as well.
[01:17:41]  So I imagine one day I'll be able to possibly use those for a good deal.
[01:17:45]  Yeah, put a little gallery and sell them.
[01:17:46]  Sick, man.
[01:17:47]  Yeah.
[01:17:47]  Well, cool, dude.
[01:17:48]  Thanks so much for doing this.
[01:17:49]  Yeah.
[01:17:49]  Hell yeah.
[01:17:50]  Thanks for coming.
[01:17:52]  Tell people the main social media links or where they can find you online.
[01:17:57]  Yeah.
[01:17:58]  At Infinite Third.
[01:17:59]  Spelled out t-h-i-r-d on instagram and twitter and uh, I have facebook pages and stuff like that.
[01:18:08]  But really just, you can find me if you search Billy Maze.
[01:18:10]  The third, I I, I you'll find all my stuff.
[01:18:14]  Uh yeah, I have tons of albums on BAND CAMP and on Itunes and Apple Music and Spotify and all that uh, under infinite.
[01:18:22]  Third, if you want to check out the Mouth Council, Mouth Council stuff, it's uh pretty much best to just like go on youtube, because there's not really much like just search it more videos and stuff.
[01:18:33]  But yeah, i'm always around, i'm always touring, i'm trying to go to more cities in 2020.
[01:18:37]  Do you post the dates up on the website and stuff?
[01:18:39]  Infinite.
[01:18:39]  Third.com always has all the dates, including Mouth Council dates okay, with uh links to um event pages and stuff like that.
[01:18:47]  So I, I personally keep up with it and I type it out every couple days.
[01:18:51]  I'll update it, hell yeah.
[01:18:52]  So yeah, i'm super reachable if people want to try to contact me and uh collaborate or something like that.
[01:18:57]  Just yeah, cool dude, i'm super pumped for uh for saturday.
[01:19:01]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:19:02]  Yeah.
[01:19:02]  Cool, man.
[01:19:03]  It's going to be fun.
[01:19:03]  All right, dude.
[01:19:04]  Thanks again.
[01:19:04]  Cool.
[01:19:05]  Thank you.