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April 4, 2016 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:21:51
Joe Rogan Experience #780 - Sturgill Simpson
Participants
Main voices
j
joe rogan
01:31:06
s
sturgill simpson
45:13
Appearances
Clips
j
jamie vernon
00:22
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Yes!
joe rogan
What's up?
unidentified
Sturgill motherfucking Samson.
joe rogan
Dude, you been on a ride since the last time I talked to you?
sturgill simpson
When was it?
joe rogan
Well, last time I talked to you wasn't that long ago, but last time you've been here...
sturgill simpson
I'm hearing things kind of...
joe rogan
Is it something wonky?
sturgill simpson
It was boomy almost.
I feel like it...
joe rogan
Is there something wrong with that?
Something wrong with the headphones?
sturgill simpson
Might be just me.
unidentified
Did it just change?
sturgill simpson
Yeah, that sounds better.
Thank you.
joe rogan
What'd you do, Jamie?
Put some fucking effects on that, bitch?
sturgill simpson
He didn't touch anything.
He's just asking, is it better?
joe rogan
So, yeah, I mean, you're blowing the fuck up, dude.
I have to get this out of the way before we even start talking.
It's fascinating to watch.
sturgill simpson
Why is that?
joe rogan
Well, it's always fascinating to watch someone who you think is very talented get recognized.
I think you're very talented.
And then becoming friends with you, it's interesting to talk to you and to see what it's like.
sturgill simpson
To see me process it all in real time.
Probably have some interesting insight, I would imagine.
joe rogan
Yeah, I guess so.
For me, it was a slow one.
It was a slow burn.
It took a long time and a lot of different shows until it started getting really weird.
It was pretty manageable.
sturgill simpson
News Radio, how long were you out here before that happened?
joe rogan
I came out here for a show right before that.
I was on another show called Hardball.
There was this baseball show.
So that was maybe like six months before News Radio.
So I wasn't out here very long.
I came out here specifically for that Hardball show.
sturgill simpson
When things just sort of, opportunities turn into other things?
joe rogan
Yeah, you know, it ebbs and flows and comes and goes, but the news radio fame was non-existent.
Nobody ever recognized me, ever.
But you're getting recognized now.
sturgill simpson
Not too much, man.
I mean, in specific towns where we do better, yeah, but it's, you know, 99% of the time people are really cool.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Isn't that the fact?
Yeah.
That's really what's up, 99% of the time.
People are really cool.
sturgill simpson
And even the 1% are still cool.
It's just, it lasts a little too long.
unidentified
I don't know.
joe rogan
It's the outliers, you know, the extreme cases that aren't, you know, the 1% of the 1%.
sturgill simpson
That could be issues.
In the grand scheme of things, I don't feel like I've really blown up that big.
You know what I mean?
I feel like I've clawed my way to the beginning, as it were.
joe rogan
That's a good way to look at it.
Well, I mean, what's the beginning?
What's the top?
I don't know.
sturgill simpson
Exactly.
joe rogan
What I do know is that there's a lot of people that will text me, dude, have you heard of Sturgill Simpson?
Holy shit.
Even now?
Yeah, even now.
sturgill simpson
Man, it's...
Although, I guess...
Transitionally, it's been in the last couple years, three years, but I've been doing this my whole life to various levels of thanklessness.
But yeah, a lot of years in honky-tonks and just dive bars where you were background noise.
And now that I'm older, I think that's been the best part of it is I'm clear and focused enough and I have enough responsibilities in my life to where I'm not taking it for granted.
Does that make sense?
joe rogan
100%.
sturgill simpson
Trying to really...
Use it as the opportunity that it is to do something hopefully bigger than just myself.
joe rogan
Well, being a famous singer, you affect people.
A singer and a songwriter, you affect people in a very strange way.
There's an intense emotion that's...
That's connected to a song that really moves you.
There's this intense connection.
I think for someone like you...
Like, it's great that you've got all this life experience.
I think that helps so much, man.
I think if you're a fucking Justin Bieber type character, boy, you're almost guaranteed to be fucked.
Like, that kind of scrutiny, I don't...
sturgill simpson
How old was he when that all started?
joe rogan
He's a baby.
sturgill simpson
I mean, I know who he is, but I couldn't tell you a single song that kids sing.
Not a single one.
But yet I know who he is.
Why is that?
joe rogan
Well, he's famous as fuck.
sturgill simpson
He's famous as fuck, man.
But yeah, the poor guy.
joe rogan
Yeah, the poor guy.
Nobody.
sturgill simpson
It's easy to judge and sit back and be like, oh, he's such a fuck-up.
The kid has a very rare and unique perspective on the life experience.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Look, that kid is doing a splendid job.
A splendid job.
sturgill simpson
He's fucking up just enough.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's fucking up a little bit, but you know, he's fine.
In comparison to what a normal person would be with that kind of...
Insane breach?
What it must be like for him to just try to go through a group of girls?
He gets attacked like dogs.
They'll fight for him.
They'll claw at him.
What the fuck, man?
He's only like 19 or something, right?
Is he 19?
That's insane.
That's insane.
It's gotta be so hard to keep your shit together and to have a balanced perspective, because his only perspective is one of fame.
See, you talking about the honky-tonks, and when you were here last time, you talked about crazy jobs you had.
You worked on a train, right?
Yeah.
I mean, think about that kind of shit.
Go from that, that kind of shit, to where you are now, you have an earned perspective, an earned perspective.
sturgill simpson
It's still hard to feel like, when you say earned, my life's pretty cool now, man.
I get to go out and make art for a living and support my family.
And play music.
joe rogan
Yeah, no, it's awesome.
sturgill simpson
It's kind of dope.
For sure.
Even that said, as long as it took to get here, and even the last three years, we toured our asses off, going in circles to kind of build it organically.
I feel really proud about that, because no matter what happens up or down, I can feel like I've accomplished something with merit.
Yeah.
But it...
joe rogan
Well, it's a beautiful time.
It's a beautiful time for artists, you know?
sturgill simpson
Oh, we're definitely in a moment.
joe rogan
Yeah, right?
sturgill simpson
For sure.
joe rogan
It seems like a moment with music, a moment with...
It's definitely a moment with stand-up comedy.
We all talk about it.
It's like the best time ever for stand-up.
I think country music, too.
sturgill simpson
Dude, I'm still getting over Brian Holtzman.
unidentified
Ha!
sturgill simpson
Who's the guy that did the last set that night?
Dude, that fucking...
I was traumatized.
That was an experience, man.
I can't even tell you.
Because you motherfuckers didn't tell me what was coming.
We were just like, oh, you gotta go see this guy's set.
I'm sitting there thinking, I'm watching this guy bomb harder than anything I've ever seen.
He's telling people in the audience to just start fucking.
I couldn't take my eyes off of it.
It was amazing.
joe rogan
It was awesome.
sturgill simpson
And then after the set, he's like, yeah!
Holy shit, that was all just genius.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's genius.
Brian Holtzman's genius, 100%.
unidentified
People were running out of the room, man.
sturgill simpson
Like, literally, this takes too well.
They ran out of the room to get away from this thing happening on stage.
joe rogan
It's a vile expression of toxic masculinity on stage.
Yeah, Brian does the Kinnison spot, which is the last spot of the night.
So the last guy on the Comedy Store.
Most spots at the Comedy Store.
sturgill simpson
The nightcap.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Last spot at the Comedy Store just goes on from like, I guess he gets on probably somewhere around 12.30, maybe 1-ish.
And then he might go until 2.00.
sturgill simpson
So he's got a long stretch.
joe rogan
He does whatever he wants.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
That's why it's the Kinnison spot.
sturgill simpson
How long has he been in that spot?
joe rogan
Well, he's the perfect guy for that spot.
And he does it on and off.
He's been there at the store as long as I have.
He's been there at the store since 94. I met him in 94. Is it always in that room?
No, he does the little room, too.
That's where I first met him.
When I first met him, he was like this promising, up-and-coming guy that would go on in the smaller room.
He was one of the hot, up-and-coming guys, but he always kept a real job.
In my opinion, he's one of the best comics in the world.
He just doesn't get a chance to show it to people.
We've tried to talk about what would be the best way to let people know, and I think because he changes his stuff so much.
I think just putting cameras on him every night, filming these Kinnison spots that he does every Friday and Saturday night.
I tell everybody, if you want to see some comedy...
sturgill simpson
It's a tough one because to make people aware, to let them know, you almost in a way sort of have to give away...
What makes it...
joe rogan
I don't know, man.
It doesn't bother me.
I know.
I know, and I think it's fucking genius.
I know he's a great guy.
But, I mean, we're kind of beating around the bush here.
He says obviously ridiculously offensive things that he doesn't really mean.
I fucking have always loved that style of comedy.
And he's, in my opinion, one of the best ever at it.
He's a monster.
Just people don't know for whatever, but they don't know because he never left.
sturgill simpson
Right.
joe rogan
He stayed at the store, and that's his spot.
He stayed in LA, and he always kept a job.
He always had a job.
He was a meter man at one point.
He's had a bunch of jobs like that.
sturgill simpson
Kind of a Bukowski type guy.
joe rogan
Exactly, but, you know, you got to do it all for him.
Like, someone's got to come along and do it all for him.
Oh, really?
Yeah, let's just take these off, man.
Let's be casual, bro.
sturgill simpson
Let's be casual.
I can't wear them in the studio either, man.
joe rogan
Really?
They bug you?
sturgill simpson
They fuck with me.
It's just not a natural...
You're responding to what you hear in your ears as opposed to the...
joe rogan
It's good for some people because some people don't realize how goofy it sounds when everybody talks over everybody.
Like if you have three people and they don't have the ear things on...
sturgill simpson
That's what we were talking about before you came in with the fight podcast and stuff.
joe rogan
Yeah, so with the Fight Podcast, we do four people.
And we made it mandatory.
Like, gotta wear earphones because we're drunk and stoned and we're talking over each other.
People are chewing into the mic.
They don't know how bad it sounds.
People are eating pickles.
Potato chips and pickles into the fucking microphone.
And it's just like, oh my god.
I would get these screaming texts from people.
unidentified
Stop chewing into the fucking microphones!
joe rogan
So...
We had to institute the headphones policy.
But for a gentle conversationalist like yourself, it's very easy.
Put those aside.
Are you, like, when you were touring, like, all those three years, when you were going crazy and touring like a maniac, have you settled that down to more manageable sort of a schedule?
unidentified
Oh, absolutely.
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
It would have been fine.
Otherwise...
I mean, I've always lived out of a bag, really, you know what I mean?
And wanted to be moving all the time.
So in that regard, it's kind of ideal, but the timing was a little bittersweet.
My son was born about a month after the last record came out.
So I was home for that, and then basically three or four days after he was born, I had to go to Europe for some shows, and then Press started rolling in, word of mouth, and record just started selling.
joe rogan
Dude, it's like a movie.
sturgill simpson
And my wife is very supportive, and I wouldn't have moved to Nashville in the first place to do anything without her telling me, you can do this, you know what I mean?
I'd probably still be working at the railroad.
When it all kind of came about, you know, she basically said, you know, we didn't come here and like, you do everything up until this point to not be able to go and...
Because you have to now.
You have to tour.
Right.
So I did.
I think missing out what was going on at home and carrying some sense of guilt maybe for that, because even though I'm out here and my dreams are coming true, it's providing for my family, but when we come home after five or six weeks and I've got a week at home before leaving again, I was seeing what I was missing in incremental stages, and I think it took a toll on me emotionally in a way that I wouldn't have anticipated.
So that's kind of where this record came from.
joe rogan
I don't go on that kind of tour, but when I go away just for a few days, just for four or five days, it bumps me out.
When you come back home, this rush of love.
sturgill simpson
That's a good way to put it.
joe rogan
It's what it's like.
When I come home, like I just got back from the road.
I was in Boston this weekend.
I come home on Sunday.
And when your kids run up to you and jump into your arms and you're carrying them and talking to them, it's very hard to describe for anybody that doesn't have any children or doesn't have close friends with children.
It's very hard to describe.
It's a fucking game changer.
It's a game changer.
It changes who you are.
sturgill simpson
Instantly.
joe rogan
Yeah.
You're just a different thing.
You're a different...
Your perspective on the world is so different.
And I don't think it's mandatory.
And I think this is important to say.
Because, man, you used to bum me the fuck out when people who were fathers or mothers would treat you like you were doing something wrong because you didn't have kids.
sturgill simpson
Or like there was something wrong with you if you didn't have...
joe rogan
That's bullshit.
Or they would tell you that you don't even know about life until you have kids.
Yeah, it's a perspective enhancer, but guess what?
A lot of shit's a perspective enhancer.
You don't have to do it.
I just hate when people tell people that it's this mandatory aspect of life.
I think you could absolutely have a fulfilled life and never procreate.
sturgill simpson
A lot of people shouldn't be parents, man.
joe rogan
Yeah, for sure.
Almost every girl I ever dated.
Stay out of the business.
That's not true.
But they changed too, man.
I have a buddy of mine.
His ex-girlfriend was crazy.
Just off the charts crazy.
Just wild.
The girl was out of her mind.
Just drugs and sex and chaos.
She had a kid.
Bam!
Snapped out of it.
Eats healthy, organic.
She's super mom.
sturgill simpson
It wasn't about her anymore.
joe rogan
It also is about a fresh chance to do something correct and raise a child with love and not create someone like yourself.
It's this weird eye-opening thing, I think, for a lot of people, when they realize where all their anger comes from, where all their...
Oh, it comes from not being raised correctly.
That's a giant part of most people's lives, is what kind of an interaction you have with the people that love you.
And if you get programmed, like, real early on that love means hitting and screaming and chaos and yelling and fighting.
Dude, when I was a kid, man, I used to look at marriage like somebody wanted to serve me plates of shit for the rest of my life.
Like, what?
Like, why would you do that?
Because what I grew up with was just chaos.
I grew up with people yelling at each other and hitting each other and, ah, fuck this!
And you don't realize, I think, until you have a little baby that you're watching learn and develop, and you're sort of data crunching all this shit, all these events in this child's life, and you're experiencing all this with them.
And the way you're experiencing with them is this intense bond of love, but also of guidance.
So you have to guide this little person.
And so while I'm doing that, and just little moments and events in my daughter's lives, little conversations that we have, That make me sort of process how they view the world and how they think about things.
That has made me just so much more aware of where a lot of my own weird personality quirks have come from.
sturgill simpson
It's like looking into your own eyes.
joe rogan
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
So you're seeing, you know, everything's instantly recognizable.
But yeah, that's a good way.
What did you just say?
You said...
Seeing their perspective, you know?
unidentified
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
But they're just mirroring whatever you're doing.
joe rogan
Yeah, because they don't hide things.
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
You know, they don't hide emotions.
They don't hide thoughts.
And if you can open up lines of communication with them really young and get them constantly used to talking about feelings and about thoughts and about why do you get those feelings?
You know, they'll get jealous of each other.
Why does she get a new tour?
Why do you care if she has a new tour?
Like, why does that bother you if somebody else has something good?
And you see that little brain going, oh yeah.
Because there's this animal fucking instinct that makes you want to get upset about something.
And you're like, what?
Her friend gave her a tour.
Where's my shit?
And you got to like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You were happy until you found out that something good happened to someone you love?
That doesn't make any sense now, does it?
And they're like, oh yeah.
You can see the little fucking tiny, tiny brain spinning.
sturgill simpson
He's just starting to talk, so we'll get there, but now it's like...
joe rogan
It's a trip.
sturgill simpson
We really like playing drums together.
So that's probably the...
joe rogan
That's awesome.
When he's talking to you, does it freak you out?
It's happening right now.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, I mean, gosh, it was there for a while.
There was this little period where it was like 10 words every day, and you don't even know they're picking them up until they say them.
And they'll look at something and say it, and you know you haven't had this lesson yet.
And it's like, wow, man.
To express emotions or even to see them At such a young age understanding how to manipulate situations, you know what I mean?
That's a really interesting social dynamic.
unidentified
You're watching like a primitive game of chess.
joe rogan
A little primitive child chess.
My daughter was three and we were skiing and she was packing her stuff up and she didn't have her helmet or suitcase so she had her suitcase closed and then my wife goes, hey, you forgot your helmet.
And she goes, shit.
She was three.
When a three-year-old goes, shit, like a nice long one.
sturgill simpson
Knew just how to say it, yeah.
joe rogan
I had to bite my hand to keep from laughing.
I mean, I try to encourage stuff that's funny as much as possible, but you can't encourage them swearing because they don't have the self-control to shut it off when they go to school.
You don't want to be the parents that teach the kids that's swearing around the house.
But it is fine.
It really is.
What the fuck are we doing?
It's restricting the use of words to children.
It's like, why?
sturgill simpson
I'm about over the PC thing.
joe rogan
Oh my god, it's driving me fucking bananas.
But this one is just fucking crazy.
It's just so crazy.
Why swears?
It just seems so strange.
sturgill simpson
It doesn't seem to be an issue much anywhere else in the world you go.
joe rogan
Well, for adults in business, I kind of understand not using them.
sturgill simpson
Formalities.
joe rogan
Yeah, for formalities.
I mean, if you want to know someone's respectable...
sturgill simpson
It is a rather lazy form of linguistics, though.
joe rogan
Sure.
sturgill simpson
But, hey, it feels good, so...
joe rogan
Well, it can be lazy, but it's like everything else.
sturgill simpson
I think it's stress-related, honestly, man.
joe rogan
Swearing?
sturgill simpson
I think it comes from anxieties and stress-induced variables.
I remember in the Navy, it's fuck this, fuck that, fuck every other word.
When I worked at the railroads, I'm salty language out there, because you're under this...
Highly efficient expectation all the time.
And there's all these creative personalities and ideas bouncing off each other in these little confined spaces and everybody's just wound tighter than a banjo string.
joe rogan
It can be used again in ways though, right?
It's also used as like a pause sometimes.
People use it in place of...
sturgill simpson
A meter tool?
joe rogan
Well, you know, sometimes people don't know what they're going to say next, and they want to say, uh, but instead they replace it with fuck.
Like, a fucking guy with his fucking...
I'm fucking sitting there, right?
I'm fucking talking to this guy, you know, like that kind of...
That's where it gets real lazy.
Most people don't even realize the weird tics they have.
I didn't realize how many times I'd say, you know, or you know what I mean.
Or like.
The word like.
Like is a fucking dangerous one.
Because you could be talking to someone and not pick it up, but then once you do pick it up, you can't.
It's all you hear.
Like, people have that little weird roadblock, and they have a blind side, they didn't see it, a blind spot, and they just say like all the time.
unidentified
Like.
joe rogan
It's terrifying, because it might be me.
I mean, definitely have been...
Tommy Stigura's got it bad.
Stigura's got it bad.
He's got it bad.
He's a likeaholic.
He loves it.
jamie vernon
He hams it up a little bit, but, like on that video he did in Cleveland this weekend, did you see that?
joe rogan
I didn't see that.
unidentified
That's really funny.
joe rogan
Was it him and Hannibal Buress?
unidentified
No, no, no.
He was on...
joe rogan
Oh, he was playing that character.
Yeah, yeah, I did see that.
Our friend Tom Segura was in this morning show.
Do you have to do those morning shows?
sturgill simpson
No, I don't.
I don't do those.
joe rogan
Good for you.
sturgill simpson
My career will suffer to some degree because of it, but man, I would never ask anyone to deal with me in a situation like that.
It's best just to know what you are and accept it.
joe rogan
Do you get a hard time for not wanting to do certain kinds of press?
Do they give you a hard time?
sturgill simpson
Not really.
I mean, I think most of the people that I've been working with for a while now, they know who they're dealing with.
And I don't mind doing the press, honestly.
It's just...
At a certain point it becomes, I think, counterproductive or even destructive because it's...
I don't know.
You end up repeating things a lot.
unidentified
Yes.
sturgill simpson
To the point that you're asked the same question so many times that without even realizing that you find yourself giving verbatim answers.
unidentified
Right.
sturgill simpson
That's when you know it's time to stop talking about it.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
sturgill simpson
Because it's...
Like I said, the more I feel like I talk about it, you're sort of denying people their...
A better chance to interpret it in a way that's going to make it mean even more to them.
And they'll hear it in a way that maybe I didn't even mean it.
joe rogan
Your memories become weird to you when you talk about them all the time, too.
When you talk about certain things and you repeat yourself over and over again.
It almost becomes a script to you.
The memories of those things get weird.
sturgill simpson
I realized, like I said, I've been playing music forever, but all this other stuff was very sudden transition.
But being a naturally skeptical person and self-aware, you get in these situations, and I sort of realize there's a certain theatric to it all.
You know what I mean?
And then once you get past the reality of that, and then you learn enough about it to know that you can sit and talk for three hours, literally.
Yeah.
It's not a representation of what you talked about.
You can talk about everything under the sun, and they might take one little sentence that had nothing to do with anything, and an editor decides that that should be the title of the article that is now written from some preconceived stance that you were unaware of during the conversation.
joe rogan
The written word is especially problematic.
sturgill simpson
You can't print context.
joe rogan
You can't print context and it's literally someone's interpretation.
It's art that's interpreting an individual.
So if someone writes a story about you, it's really art because it's their own way of flavoring this whole interaction.
They try to do it with, you know, colorful descriptives and they try to use bold adjectives and try to figure out a way to...
Paint it in the most entertaining way as well as get some point across.
So I think sometimes with a lot of guys...
sturgill simpson
They're also just trying to get you to click on their website.
joe rogan
Yep, that's true.
But the way to do that is with a good entertainment.
So it doesn't necessarily have to be an actual factual representation of who you are.
Like if someone writes a story about you...
Like, what's almost more important is this art of getting something salacious, this art of writing something, something that makes you say, oh, this guy is wild, or this guy is, you know, it has to be like this one thing, you know, Sturgill Simpson first fucked a man when he was 14, you know, you know what I mean?
Like something, like first sentence, like, hey, Jesus, where the fuck is this article going, you know?
Not really, but he would have you believe that.
You know what I mean?
sturgill simpson
I didn't realize it until it's when you meet people on the street and you realize they have these crazy...
Misinformed ideas about who you are and what you represent and what you are.
That was a good lesson learned.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's a good lesson for anybody.
sturgill simpson
I'm actually just kind of a dork.
joe rogan
What's that?
sturgill simpson
It's really just like a dork, but you're like this outlaw, tough guy, fucking dirt to dirt.
joe rogan
That's what they think?
sturgill simpson
I don't know.
joe rogan
Some of them.
sturgill simpson
Some of them probably do.
joe rogan
People are always looking for that though, right?
I think they're always looking for the outlaw country guy.
sturgill simpson
It seems to be the case.
joe rogan
Yeah, a shooter had a song making fun of all these fake outlaws.
sturgill simpson
I think his dad had a song making fun of all that shit, too.
joe rogan
His dad did.
Well, his dad was the real thing.
It's got to be hard to look at some fake outlaws with designer scratches in their jeans like they got attacked by a fucking leopard or some shit.
I mean, that looks so stupid.
And when your dad is fucking Waylon Jennings...
That's got to be even more offensive.
sturgill simpson
I can't imagine, man.
joe rogan
You know, when they see these guys with a hat that they just got 15 minutes before they went on stage, someone handed it to them and placed it perfectly, and someone's doing their hair and checking to make sure everything's good, then they send them out there to be an outlaw.
Sober, on Adderall, probably beta blockers.
sturgill simpson
It's something that...
I couldn't possibly describe to you how little I pay attention to it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
To country or to music in general?
sturgill simpson
Country, but even anymore I don't really listen to much going on.
joe rogan
Are you buddies with that guy Jason?
sturgill simpson
Isbell?
joe rogan
Isbell.
That's the right way to say it?
Dude, I just got into him a couple weeks ago.
He's a genius.
Fantastic.
I listened to his most recent album like the entire time I was in Mexico.
I was in Mexico for like a week.
I just listened to him the entire time.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, we used Jason to play some shows together.
He's a good dude, man.
You should have him on the podcast.
joe rogan
I would love to.
sturgill simpson
Interesting guy.
Really smart dude.
joe rogan
Great writer.
sturgill simpson
Oh, yeah.
He's kind of the guy.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
I mean, the lyrics.
Incredible.
Intense.
Just so really well structured, too.
sturgill simpson
That's the other thing about this job is you meet people that you hit it off with, but you never hang out because you're never at home.
We've been trying for like two years to take our wives to dinner, man.
It's one or the other.
You're either on a tour or somebody's back or...
joe rogan
I know exactly what it's like.
I know exactly what it's like.
Comedians, we work together a lot.
That's how we do it.
We also work together at the store.
That's why the store is like a great base.
It's like home base.
So everybody goes to the store.
So we meet each other in the store during the weeknights.
And then a lot of times on the weekends, we'll work together.
Like if we do big theater shows especially.
sturgill simpson
How many nights do you think you're down there?
joe rogan
The store?
At least two.
Always at least two.
sturgill simpson
Just working.
joe rogan
Yeah, it depends on how many nights I'm in town.
But it's convenient for me because my spots are always after 10. So my kids are already asleep.
So I can jet out after I put them to bed.
They go to bed at like 8. So I'm gone.
You know, it's perfect.
And it's also, like, for anybody who does the road a lot, it's a nice wake-up call.
You know, like, you just see these animals going up in there.
You know, Chris Rock show up working on his Oscar speech.
sturgill simpson
He showed up that Saturday night.
joe rogan
That's right.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
Chappelle shows up all the time.
Louie shows up all the time.
Bill Burr's there all the time.
I mean just all the assassins.
sturgill simpson
Just hopping up and testing out new stuff or keeping their chops up?
joe rogan
Yeah, fucking around, keeping the chops up.
Testing out new stuff, all the above.
Just working, you know?
It's like everyone's act is sort of like a work in progress, you know?
And when you're close to them, you watch it for them like, Like Joey Diaz, who I think is the funniest guy of all time.
He's the funniest guy ever.
I never laughed harder than watching him.
But I watch his bits, I watch them develop.
Because I'm working with him all the time.
That's some of the more interesting things about...
One of the more interesting things about being friends with a lot of comedians is watching all the different styles of creation.
How they do it.
How they piece it together.
sturgill simpson
It's just like songwriting.
There's no right way to do it.
I tell you what, just the...
I'm just now getting to spend any time out here, but there's something about that world, just the couple of times I've gone and spent time in that place.
It's a totally different headspace than anything I'm used to or accustomed to, and you can see there's definitely a sense of community.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
sturgill simpson
A palpable underlying darkness to it all.
But I think what I like the most about it is there's no gray area.
All in all, everybody seems to be pretty black and white and real as fuck, you know?
joe rogan
You can get away with some ridiculous shit on that stage, too, because it's just the way it's always been.
Like Holtzman, without giving any of his set away.
Some of the things that he was saying, you're like, Jesus fucking Christ!
sturgill simpson
Oh, dude, I was...
I mean, I know you're enjoying that, too, because I was sitting there just like...
Holy shit!
joe rogan
He was particularly on fire that night, too.
Like, the screaming at people and...
sturgill simpson
So what happens when somebody gets up and just jumps on the stage and goes for him?
joe rogan
That's happened before.
sturgill simpson
I mean, the dude with his girlfriend, I was just like, what is happening right now?
Holy shit, man.
That was intense.
joe rogan
But the people were laughing, but people have attacked him.
sturgill simpson
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Martin Lawrence's bodyguard knocked him out.
sturgill simpson
Does that go south?
I mean, then what?
joe rogan
I wasn't there.
I missed the festivities, but from what I understand, Martin Lawrence was in the audience, and him and Holtzman were going back and forth, and Holtzman went over to the table to point out that it was actually Martin Lawrence that he was being heckled by.
Martin's bodyguard gets up, punches him in the head, knocks him out.
That was one time I heard.
But there was some other stuff, too.
sturgill simpson
Damn.
joe rogan
One time he took a fucking...
an ashtray, and Ari was talking about this the other day.
The comedy store...
Especially like in the early days had these thick fucking glass ashtrays.
sturgill simpson
Old school bar ashtrays.
I'm sure many people got murdered with one of those fucking things.
joe rogan
Well, Holtzman was talking about Charlie's Angels and how angry he was that anybody really fucking believes a woman could kick all those men's asses.
I take her and he grabs the ashtray and I'll fucking crush her and he throws the ashtray at the table and shatters his fucking ashtray.
sturgill simpson
Holy fuck.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's like, whoa.
He blew an ashtray up in the room.
I mean, glasses flying all over the fucking place.
I mean, he really threw this ashtray down on this table and shattered it.
It was a small crowd, but someone easily could have got hit with a hunk of glass.
That glass is probably still on that ground.
unidentified
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
Probably haven't cleaned it.
joe rogan
He definitely could probably find the shards.
But he's going for it.
You know what I mean?
It's one of those things we were talking about.
When you're writing a song, I guess, it's probably similar too, where you're creating this narrative.
You're being a separate person maybe than you are in real life.
And you're creating it, and you're seeing it from that person's perspective.
When a guy like Holtzman is doing that on stage, he's doing something similar.
But because it's just talking, people don't accept it as not really his opinion.
They think that he's just a fucking asshole and a misogynist and this and that.
It's not just like he's a character in a movie that's playing an asshole that's happened to be hilarious, which we accept.
With no reservation.
It's weird, right?
sturgill simpson
It's, uh...
I don't know, I was just enamored after the fact, and then looking back on what I'd just seen, how when he's in the moment of playing the frustrated, you know, like, this is such, you know, like, what's the fucking, what's the point?
Right.
But he was just so in that, it has to make me feel like a big part of it's coming from a very real place, too, you know?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
It's just, I mean, he's not carrying that around with him all the time, but that's definitely coming from a real place.
He has this bit about Hillary, I can't give it away.
sturgill simpson
It's kind of cathartic in a way.
joe rogan
Yeah, for sure, definitely.
But he's a very smart guy.
sturgill simpson
Obviously.
joe rogan
But he's legitimately frustrated at the world around him, you know?
sturgill simpson
Who isn't?
joe rogan
Yeah.
But if you're not, then you're not paying attention.
I mean, it's that simple.
In this day and age, look, what we all should try to do, and I know you agree, is try to be as harmonious as you can in your life, in your personal life, in your friendships, harmonious as you can.
The problem today is that in this day and age, we have access to all the stories.
All the stories, everywhere.
There's too many of us.
That's too much data to crunch.
You're only going to get the shitty ones.
Because the shitty ones are the ones you're going to hear about, because those are the ones, you know, ISIS cuts baby's head off.
Holy shit, the baby's listening to rap music.
sturgill simpson
You know, that shit doesn't scare me, man.
I don't worry about ISIS and things like that.
I worry more about...
joe rogan
Natural disasters?
sturgill simpson
Well, it's weird you should say that.
Whenever we talk, I get hung up on fault lines and the inevitable, but my wife makes fun of me about it.
No, I mean, I guess I should be worried about ISIS, but I mean, hell, these like...
Neo-Nazi bent perspective Zionist groups scare me more than ISIS. The homegrown ones?
Yeah, the ones actually here in our country.
joe rogan
Like the Oregon guys?
sturgill simpson
I don't want to...
Man, I watched about two minutes of that and I was like, I can't even look at this.
joe rogan
We still never found out who called them Yal-Qaeda.
We never figured it out.
We believe someone on this show named him Yalkaida.
sturgill simpson
Yalkaida.
joe rogan
It was either that or it was a comic that we know named him Yalkaida.
unidentified
Yeah, I Googled it.
In fact, I saw it a lot of times on Google, so I don't know where it started.
joe rogan
It might not have even started there then.
The person who said it might have heard it first.
Either way, what a fucking great name.
Yalkaida?
I fucking love that name.
sturgill simpson
I mean, I honestly did step away.
What ended up happening with all that?
joe rogan
One guy got shot and killed.
And then there was some guys turning themselves in.
And, you know, there was a standoff for a long period of time.
It had to do with grazing and cattle on public land.
sturgill simpson
BVM, what do they call it?
joe rogan
Department of Land Management, DLM. Is it DLM land?
Is that it?
Bureau Land Management?
BLM? Yeah, that's it.
sturgill simpson
There's a mountain range in Utah that was still BLM land.
A lot of the hunters were...
There was like a hundred year ban on...
Is that Okra, I think?
Okra Mountain Range?
On the other side of the valley.
And they were getting ready to open it back up after a hundred years.
unidentified
Ooh.
joe rogan
Well, most people don't have this in their country.
Most countries don't have giant swaths of public land that you can hunt and fish on.
sturgill simpson
Right.
joe rogan
That was all because of Teddy Roosevelt.
Teddy Roosevelt faced so much pressure to not do that and to give in to that that he wound up leaving.
Was he a Republican or a Democrat?
I feel like the Democrats used to be the more conservative ones back in the day.
And then the Republicans were the more open-minded and liberal.
Then somewhere along the polar axis has shifted.
At least that's what I've read, rather.
Anyway, Teddy Roosevelt, he deemed all of this land all over the country as public land.
And you could never do anything with it.
You can't fucking put cities in it.
You can't do shit with it.
This is just public land.
And this is land owned by the people of the United States.
And there's been a lot of really shady politicians that have looked at our debt, because the United States has massive debt, and they've said, look, this is one way we can get rid of this debt.
We can sell some of our public land.
I think Paul Ryan, that guy that's one of the presidential guys, I think he bowed out of the presidential election, but he was one of the guys that was...
It was one of his proposals.
And people, like outdoors people, people that hike and hunt and fish, they were going fucking crazy.
Like, you can't do this.
But you look at it on CNN. It's like one of the most important things.
About what makes this country amazing is some of our natural resources, our parks.
sturgill simpson
There's nothing else like it on the planet.
joe rogan
Yeah, Yosemite.
I mean, go to Yosemite if you don't think there's some majesty in places in the world, almost like a magic land.
You look at those mountains and you see a grizzly bear and you see a fucking herd of bison.
You're like, holy shit!
What is this?
This is a wild park.
You can go through this park and you might get eaten by a grizzly.
Go ahead.
Good luck.
I mean, you're in a world where people are fucking coddled and pampered and every edge is covered by a thick chunk of nerf.
sturgill simpson
Shit gets real.
joe rogan
Dude, you could walk through Yellowstone and two people over the last five years have been killed by bears.
sturgill simpson
It happens more than you think.
joe rogan
Yeah, man.
My friend was there.
He heard wolves howl.
He said it was the craziest shit.
He said, we're in Yosemite and you hear...
You hear it.
I was like, is it like a coyote?
unidentified
He's like, no, no, it's a fucking wolf, man.
joe rogan
It's different.
sturgill simpson
That'd be a bad, bad, bad way to go.
Speaking of Roosevelt and Yellowstone, have you ever been to that big ranger station?
I think he's the one that had it built out there, but it's this...
Like 20-story high cabin.
There's all these weird wooden...
joe rogan
No, I've heard of it, but I've never been to that.
sturgill simpson
Oh, it's amazing.
joe rogan
And it's like a really old building?
sturgill simpson
It's really old.
I mean, over 100 years old.
All the forest rangers, I think, I hope I'm getting that right, lived in it.
But it's pretty much like the coolest treehouse you'll ever see anywhere on the planet.
But it's a big hunting lodge.
joe rogan
Wow.
sturgill simpson
You should check it out if you're ever out there.
joe rogan
Imagine those days, man, when they only, you know, we have a pretty clear view.
From all the data we've taken in, all the photographs and video and all the people's accounts, we have a clear view of what this country's like.
sturgill simpson
At this point, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, we know about the drive to Vegas from L.A. We know about going up the coast to Sam.
You know what I'm saying?
But in the Teddy Roosevelt days, they were still like 50 years into pictures.
sturgill simpson
Undaunted courage, man.
unidentified
Yeah.
Right?
joe rogan
Their first pictures were in the late 1800s, right?
So the Teddy Roosevelt age...
I mean, this motherfucker was...
They barely knew anything.
sturgill simpson
No.
joe rogan
The fuck did they...
What year was Roosevelt president?
Early 1900s, 1909. So think about that.
They'd only had pictures for like, what, 50 or 60 years?
How many pictures of there of Yellowstone?
Or of the Colorado Rockies?
Or all the different types of wildlife you're going to run into.
How about a wolverine?
You got a photo of a wolverine yet?
Man, I just stumbled across that fucking thing for the first time.
Going, Jesus, what is that?
Fuck, man.
I was watching this video the other day with this dude who was driving his fucking car.
He watched a wolf and a mountain lion fighting to the death.
They were duking it out right in front of him.
He stopped his car and he said they were so close that he could reach out and touch the wolf.
And so he's sitting there in his car while this wolf and this mountain lion are fucking engaged in mortal combat.
sturgill simpson
I'm cool.
I'm good, man.
joe rogan
But what a crazy trip that would be to see that.
And, you know, if you were in the Teddy Roosevelt days...
sturgill simpson
If I knew they weren't coming through the windshield, yeah, I'd go see that.
But, I mean, I'm getting out of the car.
I don't know, yeah, we drive through Yellowstone every time.
It never fails.
If there is a grizzly sighting, you get there and there's like 20 carloads of people standing out on the street with their cameras out and a ranger standing there saying...
Please get back in your car.
You're entering the food chain.
The guy was so sardonic about it.
I was just like, this is amazing.
joe rogan
This is it right here.
This is the video.
This is the wolf, and the mountain lion has the wolf by the neck.
Wow, the mountain lion jacked him.
That is crazy.
Look at the mountain lion winning.
sturgill simpson
I think I'd rather get eaten by a great white shark than taken out by a cougar, man, because it's going to play with you like a ball of yarn.
joe rogan
Back it up, Jamie, because before that, you actually see them duking it out before the mountain lion wins.
A friend of mine is a guide.
He's a hunting guide in Colorado.
Look at this battle!
That mountain lion just clamps him down on his neck.
That wolf's trying, but it ain't working out, dude.
That mountain lion ain't letting go.
unidentified
Fuck.
Did you see that video of the panther?
sturgill simpson
The lady caught on video running by her in Florida?
joe rogan
Yeah, the panther ran by him.
Holy shit, that was scary.
Ran by her, yeah.
It's in Florida.
sturgill simpson
I was hiking on Antelope Island one time, just north of Utah, and they have this big buffalo reserve out there.
It's like a public peak, probably 6,000, you know, day hike.
But there's all these free-ranging buffalo everywhere on the island, you know?
joe rogan
Wow.
sturgill simpson
And so we're coming back down the hill, me and my buddy, and...
As we were hiking down the trail, you know, about 300 yards down, I can see there's a couple buffalo right on the trail on the footpath.
And we're like, well, that's all right.
They'll be moved on by the time we get there.
And we come down the hill, come around this big boulder, and sure as shit, they're still standing there, man.
And, you know, my uncle had a farm.
He had cows.
I've never been around a damn buffalo.
I don't know the difference.
So I'm like, well, they'll move.
It's just a big-ass cow, you know?
So we just keep walking towards them.
And my buddy, he jumps up on a rock, and he's just laughing at me like a dumbass, because I'm standing there at this point, and this thing's 15 feet in front of me.
joe rogan
Oh, my God!
sturgill simpson
And it was grazing, like, sideways with his hip towards me, and he's just eating.
And finally, he looks up and turns his head and looked at me, man, and I realized...
Holy shit!
I mean, it's like the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, man.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
sturgill simpson
And he's just looking at me, and I'm thinking, this is some dumb shit right here.
Like, what am I doing?
You know, what do I do?
And, uh...
joe rogan
That's a different buffalo, buddy.
That's a water buffalo.
unidentified
That's an Asian animal.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, it's like this old school...
joe rogan
A bison.
sturgill simpson
There you go, top left.
This is a bison, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's a water buffalo.
sturgill simpson
And he just turns and looks at me, and I'm like, oh, I'm so fucked.
And, uh...
I didn't know what else to do, so I just took one more step forward.
joe rogan
You did?
Towards him?
sturgill simpson
Yeah, I didn't know what else to do, man, because he's looking right at me.
I didn't know.
He's going to charge me.
I'm either running or what.
So I took one more step, and he just kind of like...
Often, and him and his buddy ran, but when he started running, the whole ground shook.
And I remember standing there looking at my friend thinking, that could have been really bad.
joe rogan
Oh yeah, you could be dead.
No Sturgill Simpson.
sturgill simpson
But it's open to the public.
You can hike out there all the time and there's buffalo everywhere.
How's that a winning combination?
joe rogan
I like it.
I do.
I like it way better than I like the idea of a zoo.
sturgill simpson
Enter nature at your own risk.
joe rogan
I think you should enter nature at your own risk, and I think nature should be natural.
sturgill simpson
So you're a big bow hunter, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
Okay, so we started to talk about this at dinner, but...
Moose are mean as shit.
If you shoot an arrow in an elk's ass and it doesn't kill it, you just piss it off.
And now you're 40 yards away from this thing.
What do you do?
joe rogan
Well, most importantly, you've got to practice.
Especially if you're going to shoot an arrow...
I practice every day.
sturgill simpson
Really?
joe rogan
Every day.
Every day I go somewhere and I shoot arrows.
sturgill simpson
Something you should probably take seriously.
joe rogan
You've got to take it so seriously.
It's not like a rifle thing.
sturgill simpson
No.
joe rogan
See, a rifle thing is it's all just about understanding how to use a scope and understanding trigger discipline.
You've got to understand how to squeeze a trigger and not pull it.
But archery involves a lot of weird hand-eye coordination and balance.
There's so many different factors going on.
There's like a little sight that you have, and you have to balance that sight out where the bubble is in the center, you know, the level bubble.
You got to make sure you're not torquing your bow left or right.
You got to make sure that the peep sight, the little string hole that you're looking through, lines up and eclipses perfectly your housing.
You have to make sure that your hand is completely steady.
You have to make sure you don't flinch at all when you release the arrow.
There's so much going on.
Any micro-movement can add up to several feet left or right when it gets down past like 40 and 50 yards.
sturgill simpson
All the while it's trying to control...
You're intended, you know, target on this moving creature.
joe rogan
Yeah, moving creature.
And you have to make...
You have to be good enough to make an ethical shot.
sturgill simpson
Right.
joe rogan
You know, you have to be good enough to, you know...
And it's not easy, man.
It's not fucking easy.
So that's the most important thing.
It's like, there's a lot of guys that shouldn't be doing it.
Because they're doing it and they make...
sturgill simpson
I was going to say all that said.
When shit goes wrong, what do you do?
joe rogan
Well, you have to have a plan.
If you shoot an animal and it charges out, you've got to have a tree near you or something where you can get behind the tree.
But you've got to assume...
That if you hit an animal with an arrow, the last thing it wants to do is charge you.
Unless it's a predator.
Predators might charge you.
There's a real possibility that if you hit a bear, although I know people that have hit a moose, my friend Ranella got run over by a moose.
He shot it with a rifle and went to move in for the final shot and the thing was in much better shape than he thought it was.
And it got up and charged him and knocked him over.
Yeah, and I've seen another guy who shot a moose with a bow, and the moose charged him.
But most of the time, they want to get the fuck away from you.
But again, it's not safe.
It's not supposed to be.
But it's real.
I mean, if you are hunting an elk and you kill an elk with a bow and arrow, you fucking killed an elk with a bow and arrow.
It is real.
It is 100% real.
That is a real elk.
It's a wild fucking animal.
It doesn't have any rule book.
There's no act.
There's no act break.
There's no commercial time.
That's a real 1,000 pound wild horse with a tree grown out of its fucking head.
And it's horny.
It's screaming.
This thing that's ten times bigger than you is running up a hill with a tree growing out of its head.
sturgill simpson
And now you've got to carry it out of there.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, you've got to cut it up.
Well, the elk that I shot, luckily, we were close enough to get a truck nearby.
But I know guys that have had to camp them out, pack them out.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, because, you know, the smell and everything, you're drawing predators at night if you have to do that.
unidentified
Bears.
joe rogan
You've got to be real careful with bears.
But wolves, too.
I have a friend of mine who's going to be on next week, this guy John Dudley.
He was in Alberta, and they shot an elk, and they got surrounded by wolves.
The wolves were trying to take the elk.
He said it was fucked.
They killed two wolves.
They got charged by wolves.
Yeah, it got real weird, man.
And he said, and once they had killed two, this alpha hung around the edge of this ridge and looked down at them and just decided enough was enough and just went ghost.
And they all disappeared the entire pack.
But they were around him howling.
He said he could hear like 12 distinctly different howls around them and they have an elk on the ground.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And people, you know, people say, oh, he killed a wolf, that guy's an asshole.
They kill a lot of wolves up there, folks.
And you might think that's a terrible idea, and that's horrible, and it is if you don't live there.
But if you live there, fuck, they have to.
Like, you don't understand.
Everybody has this idea, and I talk about this way too much, so I'll stop, but everybody has this idea of predators, that they're like some character in a movie that knows the script.
They don't, man.
You have to control their fucking populations.
They just found 19 dead elk that these wolves killed in Wyoming.
They just left them there.
They just went on a slaughter fest.
They snuck into this pack of...
Some of those elk packs in Wyoming, you'll get like 100 elk.
It's immense.
These huge, huge packs of elk.
What would you call them?
A herd of elk?
And so this wolf pack jumped in there.
Look at all the elk they killed.
19 elk, and they didn't eat any of them.
They just killed them.
sturgill simpson
Just killed them.
joe rogan
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
You know, like you said, unless you live there, it's hard to have an opinion one way or another, I guess.
joe rogan
Well, everybody that has an opinion, it's all, I mean, people that have unrealistic opinions about wolves, it's all coming from a beautiful place.
It's coming from a place of love.
They love animals.
sturgill simpson
But they do breed like dogs.
Yeah, they do.
joe rogan
Yeah, they have litters, man.
sturgill simpson
Nothing's hunting them.
joe rogan
Yeah, people are like, only the alphas get to breed.
You better fucking read up on history.
Natural history.
That's not true.
They all fuck.
Dogs fuck like crazy.
The alphas control most of the breeding, yeah.
But it doesn't mean the other ones don't fuck.
There's a lot of wolves.
They just did some recent survey on wolves in, I believe it was Idaho, and they were talking about how many of them there are.
They're like, whoa.
They're far beyond where they thought that they needed to be before they would put them back on the hunting list.
But they don't ever want to put them on...
What happens is they reintroduced them in the 90s.
And before that, they were pretty much wiped out by cattle ranchers and all these people throughout the West.
There's very few wild wolves in North America.
And so they reintroduced these wolves from Canada that happened to be larger, by the way.
They're larger wolves than the wolves that were naturally here.
sturgill simpson
What did the Native Americans do about the wolf population back in the day?
joe rogan
Well, they killed them, certainly, because they used to use their skins to sneak up on bison, actually.
There's a crazy fucking famous painting, an iconic painting of these American Indians with a wolf costume on.
They're covering their body, and they're crawling with a bow and arrow.
Up to these bison.
Because bison weren't scared of wolves.
They'd be like, bitch, fucking kick you in your head.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, right?
Seriously.
joe rogan
Yeah, bison's don't...
That's one of the reasons why there were so many of them.
Other animals really had a very difficult time taking them out.
Look at this.
There's the picture.
That's like an icon.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, that's exactly how that one looked at me right there.
unidentified
Fuck!
joe rogan
That's gotta be bone chilling.
What did that feel like, staring that thing down?
sturgill simpson
Man...
I froze.
I literally froze because I didn't know what to do.
joe rogan
Could be the end of your life.
unidentified
That was the thing.
sturgill simpson
You're standing there and I realize I've just put myself in a horrendously bad situation.
joe rogan
The amount of force they could generate, you can't even resist it.
There's nothing you could do.
You're just completely helpless.
Like, there's literally nothing you could do.
They run faster than you.
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
joe rogan
And they're, you know, that's a 1,500, 2,000 pound animal.
unidentified
Fuck.
joe rogan
Fuck.
And the Indians snuck up on them like that.
And my friend Steve Rinella, not Steve Rinella, Remy Warren, he has this television show called Apex Predator.
And they did all these different episodes on the ways different animals hunt their prey and see if he could recreate it.
And that's one of the things he did.
He took a wolf skin and put it on him and crawled up to these buffalo and got like right inside them.
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
But they're afraid of us.
joe rogan
Well, they're afraid of people because of our bang sticks.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, right, true that.
joe rogan
I was saying earlier, I forgot what I was talking about for a second, but a friend of mine is a guide in Colorado, and they found these mountain lion tracks, like all these mountain lion tracks, and then elk tracks, and then the mountain lion tracks and the elk tracks together, and then there's a space of like several hundred yards where there was just elk tracks.
And so they followed that elk track and they found a mountain lion on top of the elk killing it.
This fucking giant elk, like a thousand pound elk.
He said it was a huge six by six.
So you're talking about a mature animal.
And this mountain lion was like, fuck it, I'm going for it.
And he jumped on this thing and clamped a hold of its back and then brought it down.
The mountain lion weighed 150 pounds.
So it took out this thousand plus pound elk by jumping on its back and biting its neck.
sturgill simpson
Did you guys get them down in the valley?
joe rogan
Mountain lions?
sturgill simpson
Yeah, out here encroaching.
joe rogan
Killed a koala bear at the zoo the other day.
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
Now we're taking it seriously.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, they're like, how the fuck did it get in?
It's got a 12-foot high fence and there's razor wire on the top.
sturgill simpson
It's a 150-pound sneaky-ass cat, man.
Come on.
I saw that little fucking Ewok and it was like, mm-hmm.
unidentified
I know, but it climbed over barbed wire.
sturgill simpson
That's hardcore, dude.
joe rogan
That's hard as fucking core gets.
12 foot high fence, barbed wire on the top.
He's like, good try.
sturgill simpson
I got this.
joe rogan
Good try.
He probably got cut up a bit.
But whatever.
He's a mountain lion.
They probably heal like that.
sturgill simpson
It's an enormous cat.
Think about that, though, man.
A 150-pound cat.
joe rogan
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
Like, you know, you're riding your bike one day.
One of those things falls out of a tree on your head.
It's going to grab your neck with these big old saber teeth and, like, take you to the ground and fucking play with you for a while.
It's not just going to kill you, you know what I mean?
It's going to mess with your shit.
joe rogan
Look at the size of that fucker.
That's the one that lives up in the Hollywood Hills.
That's the one that they think killed the koala bear.
That's a lion.
sturgill simpson
That's a lion, dude.
joe rogan
I mean, that's like a lion in Africa lion.
Look at the fucking forearms on that goddamn thing.
Like, those front forearms are insane.
sturgill simpson
That would be awful.
joe rogan
That's an insane amount of power that thing must have.
And they say that pound for pound, they're one of the strongest cats.
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
I mean, look at his shoulders and arms.
My God.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I'll tell you right now, if a bobcat tries to fuck with me, I'll fuck up a bobcat.
I'm pretty confident I'll kick a bobcat's ass.
sturgill simpson
I bet it still wouldn't be fun.
joe rogan
No, I'm kidding, man.
Look, I have cats, and I have to wash them.
And my daughter is allergic to cats, and the only way we can mitigate it is we have to shave them.
So they get a buzz cut, like a lion's cut, and wash them.
And it makes a giant difference in how much dander they leave.
Because they're both really fluffy cats.
They would leave cat hair everywhere.
So this solution made a bit...
But I have to fucking hold on to these little fuckers while they get shaved.
And man, even though they love me, when they want to go, man, they want to go.
And you realize how difficult they are to control.
Yeah, they fucking...
They twist and contort and they fucking kick it off you and...
sturgill simpson
These big, long, sinewy, relaxed muscles that all of a sudden you're like, holy shit, you're actually a little bodybuilder, okay.
joe rogan
We're just so lucky we're so much bigger than them, but with a mountain lion, you're not.
sturgill simpson
My wife wants to get a cat.
joe rogan
There's a bobcat.
unidentified
I'm there.
joe rogan
Come get some bobcat.
I'll fuck you up, bitch.
It'd probably be terrifying.
Aw, that was a cute one.
That's a lynx, though.
I don't think that's a bobcat.
You ever see those weird lynxes they have in Canada?
Those white ones?
sturgill simpson
I've never been to Canada, man.
No, actually, that's not true.
I've been to Canada.
I've just never been up to the part of Canada that I'd really like to see.
joe rogan
They have these weird cats, man.
They don't even look real.
They look like a Star Wars cat.
It's called a lynx.
sturgill simpson
A lynx.
joe rogan
And they have these crazy big paws with fur all...
There he is.
Look at that.
sturgill simpson
The weird ears, yeah.
joe rogan
Come on, man.
That's like a Narnia animal.
unidentified
Whoa, dude.
sturgill simpson
Some Turkish delight.
joe rogan
Yeah, look at that.
That doesn't even look real.
Look at that cat.
Tell me that looks real.
That looks like something from some weird movie.
Like their proportions.
Like go back to that last picture, Jamie.
Look at the proportions of its body.
It's so odd.
Giant feet.
Long ass big legs.
Just a weird body, man.
And that thing is just up there earning.
Just earning.
Just out there hustling.
Every day, jacking shit with its face.
jamie vernon
Like what does it hunt in Canada, I guess?
joe rogan
Everything.
I'm sure small things.
I don't think they get that big.
I mean, if I had to guess, I would say the Lynx probably only gets to be like 50 pounds.
See how big they get.
See if I'm right.
I don't think they get much bigger than that.
But I think they probably eat 24 pounds.
I think they probably eat rabbits and squirrels or fawns.
They'll definitely eat fawns.
We found this fucked up video of this martin, a martin chasing a rabbit.
You know what a martin is?
sturgill simpson
What is that?
joe rogan
Play it for him, Jamie.
sturgill simpson
Martin?
joe rogan
A martin is an animal that I always associated with fur because of those Alaska shows.
You know those shows where the dudes are living up in Alaska?
There's one called Mountain Men, and this guy runs a fur trap line, and one of the things that he traps is martin.
Well, that's a martin.
It's like a little badger, and it's chasing after a rabbit.
So the little black thing in the back is the martin.
And this is literally a run for life.
Look at this rabbit.
It's going, fuck!
Fuck!
And the Martin's hustling behind him.
sturgill simpson
This thing is moving.
joe rogan
Fuck yeah it is.
And this is like a crazy sprint.
I mean, they're both sprinting.
It's like, how long can they do it for?
And the Martin just is relentless.
And these people are filming this from their fucking car, following them behind them on the road.
And the martin just finally, the rabbit starts trying to veer off the road, and he gets into the sick shit, and the martin closes the distance.
sturgill simpson
But look at the drama here.
joe rogan
Boom, bitch!
sturgill simpson
Oh my god.
joe rogan
Yeah, and here what's crazy is they're the same size.
In fact, the martin is smaller than the rabbit.
Look at the difference.
sturgill simpson
That thing's mean as shit.
joe rogan
Oh yeah, man.
I mean, he just carried it up by its face.
That's like you jumping on a dude.
sturgill simpson
He's like he hit a nitro button or something.
joe rogan
Well, he knew the end was near.
sturgill simpson
That was cool.
joe rogan
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
Crazy.
joe rogan
Imagine if you fought with a dude to the death with your faces, right?
sturgill simpson
I'm good.
joe rogan
You killed him with your face and then dragged him up a hill with your face all in the course of 15 seconds.
From the time that Martin got a hold of that rabbit, that rabbit is dead as fuck, and he was carrying it away in 15 seconds.
sturgill simpson
with his face no my One of my good buddies is a radiology technician, and he sees all kinds of horrible shit happen to people every day.
You know what I mean?
That's why I'm thankful.
I just have to get up and try to sing and pitch to make money.
He said the worst thing he ever told me was there was a guy who was driving along on his way to work one morning, hit a deer.
The body split in half.
And the ass end of the deer came up over the hood and through his windshield.
It was just intestines and blood and shit and guts everywhere.
Oh my god.
The glass windshield cut his face all up so now he's got all this shit down in the blood and in his face.
So they bring this guy and so he came in and Where he went through the windshield and laid down in this creek bed after he hit the deer and laid there.
And while he was laying in the damn creek bed, raccoons came and snacked on his fucking face.
So then the guy ended up living.
But I mean, between all the bacteria...
joe rogan
So he got jacked.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, hit a deer.
All that shit happened.
And I guess he came out of the truck...
And then laid down in this ditch until they found him like, you know, however many hours later.
And while he was laying there unconscious, wild woodland creatures had came and eaten the open...
unidentified
Yeah, dude had a bad day, man.
Jesus!
joe rogan
How much of his face got bitten off?
sturgill simpson
Man, I'll...
Patrick said it was not pretty.
joe rogan
Holy fuck, man.
sturgill simpson
And he actually lived.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
sturgill simpson
I don't know that I'd want to survive.
Something like that.
Or maybe you do.
You always want to survive.
joe rogan
Yeah, you always want to survive.
You just want to survive just to kill as many fucking raccoons as you can.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, you'd be like the best raccoon hunter ever from that day on.
joe rogan
You'd be like a raccoon serial killer.
Just standing in front of trash cans with a rifle.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, I'm glad I don't have to work at a hospital.
joe rogan
Oh dude, I have a buddy who was an EMT who used to tell me some stories.
The craziest stories, my friend Steve, he's an ophthalmologist and he did his residency in Miami during the cocaine days.
Well played.
He's like, dude, you don't even fucking nothing.
To this day, this guy, Steve, is strapped everywhere he goes.
unidentified
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah, he wears a fucking gun everywhere.
He doesn't play games.
He lives in Arizona, and one of the reasons why he likes Arizona is because he can conceal carry.
He's just seen too much.
He saw too much early on.
You know, he told me just, every day was just gunshot to the head, gunshot to the head, gunshot to the head.
Like, you're in the...
sturgill simpson
Yeah, you know.
How are you going to maintain any kind of positive outlook?
joe rogan
You can't.
sturgill simpson
Or not just get completely burnt out.
joe rogan
You get out of it, and he got out of it.
When he got out of it, it was just like this big breath, like...
Whoa, what the fuck did I just experience?
But now, the knowledge that not only was that a real thing that he was experiencing on a daily basis, all that insane violence, all the gunshots, all the craziness, he knows that even if it's not like that anymore, like even if people, the cocaine days are kind of over, Miami's much more calm, the violence is not as bad, he knows that that is what people are capable of within his lifetime.
sturgill simpson
I'm sure you still see that shit all the time.
joe rogan
I bet you do, but I think there was a level of it during the 80s in Miami.
Do you know who Billy Corbin is, the documentary filmmaker?
sturgill simpson
Name's familiar.
joe rogan
He's got these two great documentaries called Cocaine Cowboys and Cocaine Cowboys 2. And Billy, he's been on the podcast before talking about it, but he did a great job of showing how insane that time was.
One of the things that he talked about was how one year, the graduating class of the police academy, every single one of them within a year was either dead or in jail.
They'd been murdered or they were in jail for corruption.
Like the whole police department was just massively corrupt.
Everyone was doing cocaine.
There was murders like crazy, all left and right and all around.
It was just complete chaos.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, who's the, what's one of the guy's names from the documentary, the white dude with the mustache that was kind of like a ringleader of it all.
I think he went to prison and he's out now.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The guy who flew the planes and would bury the money in the yards.
I don't remember his name either.
But I remember the lady, Griselda.
unidentified
Griselda, the godmother.
joe rogan
That lady, I think she's still alive, man.
She might have died recently, but I think she was alive and free in Columbia.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, she's living in South America for a long time in hiding.
joe rogan
Yeah, she got out of jail in America, and if her hitman who's in jail, who's in the documentary, is being honest about how many people she killed, like, whoa, whoa, Jack...
She died in 2012. So when the second movie was made, they focused on her and her being released.
What a crazy time.
So my friend Steve, he just saw all that, man.
He saw a guy with a light bulb up his ass.
unidentified
For what?
joe rogan
Someone stuffed a light bulb up their ass.
You know one of those twisty light bulbs?
The Christmas tree looking light bulbs?
Yeah.
I'm not a Christmas light bulb.
sturgill simpson
I still think I'll stick this up my ass.
joe rogan
Big ass one.
I say it looks like a Christmas tree.
I don't mean like a little one that's on your tree.
I'm talking about a several inch long light bulb that was stuffed up this dude's ass.
sturgill simpson
People get bored, man.
joe rogan
Yeah, they found everything.
Wine, champagne corks, all sorts of different objects.
Like coffee cups and stuff.
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
I've never heard any stories like that from my buddy.
joe rogan
I guess it also probably correlates with the cocaine days.
They're probably just sticking things in every hole they had.
sturgill simpson
I don't know, man.
Hats off to anybody.
It can work.
joe rogan
A coffee can in your ass?
sturgill simpson
Well, it's probably just seeing all the stuff.
Like the...
Different layers of society you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis, and having to hold any type of firm belief in humanity or civilization.
I don't know.
I would wear a person, I think.
joe rogan
Even people that don't see violence, like people maybe that see just a lot of accidents, it's got to be spooky.
They say that a lot of women who are like EMTs have a hard time settling down and having families.
They get whacked out by it, particularly.
That might be sexist to say.
I don't think it is.
Because I think that's something that I've heard female EMTs talk about, just their own personal experiences.
But that it's so dark.
Like every day you're seeing broken necks and broken legs and car accidents and people splattered on the road.
It's grueling after a while.
sturgill simpson
So what's PTSD numbers like in a profession like that?
You've got to be having some trauma.
joe rogan
Oh yeah, for sure.
You know, there's a certain amount of stress that I think comes with any kind of job where you're looking at death a lot.
I mean, how much PTSD does a doctor have?
Like, emergency room doctors, how much do they just get accustomed to it?
sturgill simpson
I think it takes a very special type of personality.
joe rogan
You know what I think it also does, man?
I think it's really a lot like what we were talking about when you're taking in all these stories in the world, because you can manage your own life, but if you're paying attention to the news, you're going to get inundated with stories by the seven billion people, and it's just too much.
There's just too much data coming at you, and too much of it is negative.
I think that's probably the same way with an emergency room doctor.
It's okay if you see somebody get hurt once in your life, a few times in your life, or maybe even...
You can get desensitized.
sturgill simpson
They're not processing it because it's on to the next case.
joe rogan
You can definitely get desensitized.
It doesn't freak you out anymore.
See a guy whose leg is hanging off.
I mean, especially guys who are taking care of troops, you know, EMTs.
sturgill simpson
Combat medics?
Oh, my God.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
sturgill simpson
Wild people are shooting at you?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, you're trying to carry them out while bullets are...
unidentified
It's insanity.
sturgill simpson
Again, I just try to sing in key, man.
joe rogan
I know.
We got it easy.
We got it easy.
It's just fascinating how many different ways to be a person there are.
You know, how many different kind of lives you can live.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
How many different types of experiences you can have.
And your reality can be so much different than somebody else's reality.
And you're convinced that your reality is life.
And they're convinced that theirs is life.
You know, like what we're talking about with the wolves.
Like those people that live near those things that are fucking shit in their pants when they hear those howls at night.
My buddy lives in BC and his neighbor's cow was taken out by wolves while they were all watching.
They're all looking out the window.
sturgill simpson
What are you going to do?
joe rogan
Can't do shit.
You can go out and start shooting.
sturgill simpson
Wait for it to get full and fuck off.
joe rogan
Yeah.
You can go out and start shooting, but it's dark.
sturgill simpson
That's pretty country, man.
I could live up there, but the winters, I think, would just be...
That's the thing.
joe rogan
They're ruthless.
But anywhere that it's too nice, you get too many people.
It's like we were talking about LA. It's too perfect.
Every day the weather's perfect.
But because of that, you have to breathe carbon monoxide air.
sturgill simpson
You know, I was telling you yesterday, it was the first time I'd ever...
At some point, I think my family was ready for an adventure or a relocation.
But yeah, I don't know that I could ever acclimate, no matter how long I was here, to convincing myself that the traffic is...
joe rogan
Worth it?
sturgill simpson
Worth it.
joe rogan
You don't have to live here.
See, that's the beautiful thing about Southern California is you could live in San Diego, like La Jolla, which is beautiful and quiet and fucking picturesque.
You see the oceans right there.
It's so pretty.
sturgill simpson
I like the northern part of the state a lot, too.
joe rogan
The northern part of the state is amazing.
I was in Mendocino, over by where the ocean is.
It's like three hours plus, maybe four hours north of San Francisco.
It's so pretty, man.
The Redwood Forest, we went through the Redwood Forest and did all that shit.
God, it's so pretty.
sturgill simpson
Went to Monterey once for a meeting with my booking agency.
The people who live there got it pretty well.
That does not suck.
Some friends in San Luis Obispo, that's really beautiful.
joe rogan
That's a nice spot too.
Those places are calm.
sturgill simpson
Right.
Really mellow, you can tell.
joe rogan
Yeah, real mellow.
My buddy John lives in San Luis Obispo.
sturgill simpson
I was about 15 years younger.
L.A. would seem like a good idea.
joe rogan
Right.
sturgill simpson
But now...
joe rogan
Santa Barbara's real nice, too, man.
Love it there.
I've got a gig there on Friday night.
Santa Barbara's like...
I don't think it's more than 100,000-plus people.
Still less small.
I don't think it's very big, man.
sturgill simpson
Shooter loves it out here.
He's lived out here a while.
joe rogan
Well, he's crazy.
Shooter lives in the heart of darkness.
He has an apartment in Los Feliz.
He's a crazy man.
He's like, you know, he loves it.
Shooter's such a character, man.
sturgill simpson
Dude.
joe rogan
I love that guy.
sturgill simpson
Sweetest guy on the planet.
joe rogan
Oh, he's the best.
He's also just like such a character, like who he is as a person.
You know, we had him in here and he was talking about doing meth.
He's like, oh yeah, I've done meth.
unidentified
That's the way he talks about it.
joe rogan
Like, come on, man, you ain't done meth.
sturgill simpson
Oh, you never tried a crank, bro?
joe rogan
Yeah, that trucker crank.
He's a talented guy too.
And I also like that you could listen to any one of his albums and it's like, oh, okay.
He's obviously in some totally different phase in this album.
He's just trying some other shit out.
sturgill simpson
He's one of the more naturally and genuinely curious and interested people.
Like when he's listening to you and asking questions, he actually means it.
joe rogan
Oh yeah, yeah.
sturgill simpson
Which is incredible.
That's a rare thing in the music business.
joe rogan
And coming from the son of royalty.
sturgill simpson
Right.
joe rogan
I mean, his dad was royalty.
I mean, there's a few musical icons that you look at and you go, well, that's like in the Royal 100, 100%.
Waylon Jennings is in the fucking Royal 100. I mean, there's just people that are in.
Chuck Berry's in.
You know what I'm saying?
He's in forever.
Waylon Jennings is in.
He's in.
That's his son.
So for him to be so normal and also be a musician and not be some weirdo who fucking desperately craves attention or needs validation, he's a genuine artist and very content.
sturgill simpson
If anything, I've seen him use his position to only try to help other people instead of himself.
And that's the truth.
unidentified
Man.
joe rogan
Well, his mom was obviously so nice, too.
sturgill simpson
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
She's so nice.
And really, like, sharp and smart.
sturgill simpson
Oh, yeah.
She's paying attention.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, man.
It's cool to talk to him.
It's the weird businessman trying to...
I mean, everyone out there, everyone, I think, that's trying...
I mean, everyone that's not some sort of a perfect person is trying to do better with their life.
You know, you're trying to improve on whatever you're doing, whether it's your job or, you know, your business or whatever your hobby is or your obsession.
We're all trying to improve on it.
But one of the weird things about being a musician, and I guess a comic as well, is that you're doing that in front of everybody.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
You know?
We're all developing as humans, you know?
But you're also performing in front of all those people.
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
It is a...
When you write songs, I guess you can't ever stop to think, oh, I have to sing this the rest of my life.
You know what I mean?
Because you'll never write any songs.
joe rogan
You could have the crown.
You don't like that song.
unidentified
Right.
sturgill simpson
Well, for me, I don't know.
I like the song.
A lot of people really like that song.
joe rogan
That song's badass.
I play that song at the gym almost every time I work out.
That's a badass song.
You're just too close to it.
sturgill simpson
I'm too close to it.
unidentified
Well, yeah.
sturgill simpson
It was a laundry list about my view on laundry list's experience.
unidentified
You know what I mean?
joe rogan
It's such a great song, though, man.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, we'll dig that one back out.
It's time to work it up, I think, in a new way.
Make it fresh for us.
I don't know.
For me, man, I love the recording process most of all.
Really?
Because that's where you learn if you've improved.
You're under a microscope.
I get hyper-focused in the studio.
It's a good thing other people get tired or I'd probably just keep them in there all day.
You know what I mean?
But it's almost like you're so tied to this thing and in it that by the time it's finished, you just don't even want to think about it anymore.
It gets like, all right, well, that's done.
joe rogan
Right.
sturgill simpson
You know?
But now you've got to work it up and go out in a live context and play this thing.
Whereas hopefully you've tried to bare your soul and be as honest as possible, but then you're standing in front of a room every night.
So you have to block that part of it out of your head that people are judging you.
unidentified
Right.
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
And that's also part of it, too.
You're living that life experience out in real time.
So this has all been really educational and new for me in terms of figuring out how to navigate that in as artistic a way as possible without compromising anything, I guess.
joe rogan
I think we all learn from each other in that way.
sturgill simpson
Because it's got to sell.
Or you don't get to do it anymore.
joe rogan
Exactly.
Do you learn from other musicians in that way?
Do you see how other guys are handling it or how it influences their creative process?
Does it influence you?
sturgill simpson
I mean, you definitely notice traits in other people that you wish you had more of or that you could maybe adhere to, and it's motivating.
But like you said, it's just about trying to be a better person and use whatever outlet this is in order to hopefully make other people feel good, too.
Or to deal with things that maybe they don't know how to express, which for me, I think, is the most important part of making music.
That's what it's always given me in the past, before I was a performer, and I just loved it from a sheer listener's position.
You know, it offers us a lot of comfort and...
I don't know.
People tell you this after the shows, that you're making an impact on their life.
My buddy Giordo said that his friend, her grandmother's laying in her hospital bed, and the last thing she heard, she played her one of my songs.
That song, My Voice.
She just said, wow, he's got a really pretty voice.
And she was totally relaxed.
So you hear things like that.
And it's easy to get hung up on Mechanics or expectations or pressures or the industry and all that but like it feels like if you just kind of step back and hit pause it's easy to remember that anybody doing this job is very lucky to be able to do this job and for me like I don't think I think in a lot of ways modern media and industry is sort of not ruined music but it's Made it really hard for people to focus
on what it's really about.
You know, it's like life is all of a sudden one big episode of The Voice.
And it's all about the year-end lists.
And who says this is better than what?
And saying somebody's art is better than somebody's art.
And I just don't think that that's ever like a healthy thing.
If that makes sense.
Making a competition out of something that's supposed to make everybody feel included.
joe rogan
Well, it's definitely contrary to what seems to be your primary focus, which is making the best music for your expression.
Expressing yourself in the best way you can and making something that's going to impact people in a way where your thoughts are going to get across.
They're going to be moved by it.
You can't do that if you're thinking about winning awards.
It's contrary.
sturgill simpson
Or selling lots of records.
joe rogan
Yeah, or any of those things, like promoting it, business.
You know, like any time you...
sturgill simpson
Not to say that it's impossible.
It's hard.
It's hard, but some people do sell a lot of records impacting people's lives with great music.
It's out there.
joe rogan
Well, great music sells.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, period.
It always finds a way.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, it's going to sell whether you're...
But, like, did you see Amy?
Amy Winehouse, the documentary.
sturgill simpson
Her records, that's why I hired the Dap Kings for this new one, man.
Just the sound of what they did on those albums.
joe rogan
Amazing.
She's such a good musician.
She was so, like, her sound, what she put together was so...
But to see how the intense pressure of being, you know, Amy Winehouse, in quotes, I mean, she was...
sturgill simpson
Or Justin Bieber or anybody else who's surrounded by enablers and kept copacetic all the time and just yes, yes, yes.
joe rogan
You've got to do other things, man.
You've got to be grounded.
sturgill simpson
You've got to go home and roll around and play with blocks.
That's what you've got to do.
unidentified
I like to get in the pool with them.
joe rogan
They surf on my back.
I go underwater and swim and they try to stand on me.
It's hard to hold your breath for as long as it takes for a five-year-old to stand on your back as you're floating.
But I mean, other things as well, like as far as not just family and loved ones and friends, which are definitely important, but I also think that other disciplines are important.
Other focuses, other things you're equally interested in, you know, because they alleviate some of the pressure of what it is to be singularly focused on one thing.
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Which we can get to the point of madness.
sturgill simpson
And it does.
I got a drum kit.
I got really into playing drums about six months ago.
It's meditational, man.
You have to relax to do it well, and you're not thinking about anything else.
And once I realized that, I was like, oh, this is really good for me.
But yeah, that's my thing.
I'm so...
This music thing, once it becomes a career, you have to be singularly focused.
Especially when I'm thinking about a record.
My wife, she just kind of leaves me alone once she sees me go to that weird processing place.
It's like nothing else is in the room anyway for a while.
And then I'm done and you just feel like...
unidentified
Whew!
sturgill simpson
Okay.
And then you don't write a song for a year.
joe rogan
Well, she seems very smart and supportive.
She can recognize that.
That's so important.
I have friends that are in relationships where the wife is not very supportive and...
It resists the creative process and doesn't understand it or care to it.
sturgill simpson
My wife's very creative, too.
She understands.
She's very independent.
Being an only child, she knows there's just sometimes where I have to go and be in my own little space.
joe rogan
I just don't think you get to what you're doing right now.
I don't think you get to that state unless you're a little crazy.
You have to be locked into it, man.
By the way, I'm so sorry I leaked the name of your album out.
sturgill simpson
I love it.
joe rogan
I loved it.
sturgill simpson
I really did.
joe rogan
I leaked it out on Instagram, but it was fucking good, man.
I was in the gym, and I said, God damn, people got to hear about this.
I was so high.
I was in Colorado, and when you get high in Colorado, when you're at 8,000 feet, or Utah actually, 8,000 feet, It just hits you in some crazy...
You feel like you're on a spaceship on top of the world.
I was feeling like I was connected to the world in some really weird way.
And I was at the gym.
I just barbecued.
And that album was so good.
It was so good, especially in that moment.
At the gym, endorphins flowing.
And then you sent me a text.
I think you leaked the name of my album.
I went, oh no, I didn't even think of that.
sturgill simpson
Man, honestly, at this point, this is definitely a record that anybody that knows about me, I would like them to hear as a record.
Because that's how I recorded it to be heard.
joe rogan
Well, that's one of the interesting aspects of it.
It's obviously one piece.
Yeah.
Well, you sent me two versions of it.
It was kind of cool, too.
Or the people did.
They sent me one version, which is just one recording.
And then the other one is side two.
And then another one where all the songs were broken down individually.
But it almost feels like I shouldn't be looking at that, you know?
sturgill simpson
I mean, ideally, I would...
That's not how I'd...
It wasn't designed to be heard broken apart, I guess.
joe rogan
But people like to hear, like, one song if they're in the car for ten minutes on the way home.
They like to hear one song.
It's not a bad thing.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, well, you know, all of my favorite records, like in my top four or five records, are all concept records.
And a lot of them are in Song Cycle, which is what they call it, like, you know, Dark Side of the Moon, where it's just one continuous flow.
joe rogan
Or The Wall.
sturgill simpson
Or The Wall, or What's Going On.
Marvin Gaye.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
What's going on was one concept?
sturgill simpson
Yeah, that was all in SongCycle.
It was written from the narrative of a Vietnam vet returning home to an inner city home and trying to adapt to society again.
It's a heavy album, man.
And then Astral Weeks by Van Morrison.
If you've never heard that record, that's some powerful dope.
joe rogan
No, I haven't.
sturgill simpson
It's all about the journey of a soul's life.
joe rogan
Whoa.
I never got into Van Morrison other than Moondance.
unidentified
Oh, dude, genius.
joe rogan
Moondance, one of my favorite songs ever.
I always wonder.
sturgill simpson
That's what he called his commercial album because Astral Weeks, although it's now considered probably one of the greatest records ever recorded, it didn't sell very well because it was too artsy for a lot of people.
So then he turned around and intentionally made a more commercially accessible album, which was Moondance and, of course, sold a gazillion copies.
joe rogan
Whenever I think about Marvin Gaye, I think about this chick that I used to date.
Because when Marvin Gaye got shot and killed by his dad...
sturgill simpson
Here in LA, right?
joe rogan
I don't know where it was.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, I think it was in Los Angeles.
It's a tragic story.
joe rogan
He got shot and killed by his own father.
The girl I was dating goes, what kind of a horrible person must he have been that his dad shot him?
I went, what?
That's not how it works.
But that was how she viewed the world.
Like, if your father shot you, you must have been a horrible person, so fuck him.
sturgill simpson
He's probably my favorite musician of all time, so I know more about Marvin Gaye than we want to go into here.
unidentified
Really?
sturgill simpson
Yeah, it's a really dark story.
joe rogan
Yeah?
sturgill simpson
Like, how so?
There was a lot of that.
Him and his dad had things that stemmed from childhood.
I think his dad was a preacher, one, but also a cross-dresser.
And so Marvin, I think, was ridiculed a lot and caught a lot of shame for that.
And his dad was very strict, authoritarian, really tyrannical, ruling the house and beat his mom a lot.
Oh, man.
So...
A lot of Marvin's sexual deviancy later on, they think, probably stemmed from some of that.
But, I mean, he's just a really highly sensitive guy and a genius that, I don't know.
joe rogan
What kind of sexual deviancy was he involved in?
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
I never heard that.
sturgill simpson
I don't want to air the guy's dirty laundry, but there's books about it.
He was doing S&M bondage.
I think he had a pretty substantial porn collection.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
sturgill simpson
He liked to talk his 17-year-old girlfriends into orgies and threesomes and that kind of thing.
joe rogan
That was legal back then.
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
He was just living, bro.
He got on the yayo and it went from there.
But I think after the height of his fame...
And he was a best-selling wreck.
He was married to the daughter of the president of Motown.
Our sister, one or the other.
And she divorced him, basically, and took everything.
Like, the whole fortune.
And he ended up smoking crack in a bread truck in Hawaii.
unidentified
No!
sturgill simpson
And this was after he's Marvin fucking gay.
You know what I mean?
joe rogan
No way.
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
And then, uh, just went down hill from there.
Nobody could get to him or help him out, so he had to move back in with his parents.
joe rogan
What?
sturgill simpson
As a grown-ass man and while he's Marvin fucking gay.
And then they think a lot of people say that's where the source of all the trauma and pain, him going back to that at that stage in his life is the worst thing that could have happened.
joe rogan
And being around his dad again.
sturgill simpson
Being around his dad.
Apparently he had an argument and he...
I told his dad, like, if he ever touched his mom again, he'd kill him.
And his dad said, well, if you ever lay a hand on me, I'll kill you.
And some people speculate that Marvin was just so done with all of it, the fame and everything that he knew by punching his father, it would get him...
Out of it.
unidentified
Whoa.
sturgill simpson
His dad shot him twice upstairs in the bedroom.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
sturgill simpson
And then I think he laid there for about 20 minutes bleeding.
And then once the ambulance showed up, the paramedics couldn't come in the house as long as the dad was still in there with the gun.
So I think his sister-in-law or brother or somebody had come in and like find the gun that his father had hidden because he wasn't talking.
unidentified
Oh my god.
sturgill simpson
And it took him.
So by the time they got him out of the house, Marvin died in the ambulance on the wheel of the hospital.
unidentified
Oof.
joe rogan
That's heavy, man.
Fuck.
What a crazy story.
sturgill simpson
Really sad.
joe rogan
It is a terrible story.
It's...
You always...
When you hear about a guy...
That, like, has this, um...
unidentified
It's almost like...
joe rogan
Overwhelming desire...
To express himself, you know?
Like when you have a song like What's Going On or if you have a song like Let's Get It On, you know?
sturgill simpson
Devastating.
joe rogan
Come on.
I mean, there's some intense memory, like his emotional connection to what he's doing.
It's just so off the charts.
And a lot of times that's almost like energized by dark moments in your life.
sturgill simpson
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Dark memories...
It overwhelms those, even the positive things.
sturgill simpson
You show me a happy, well-adjusted artist and I'll show you some boring fucking art, bro.
joe rogan
Yeah, let's get it on.
Let's get it on.
unidentified
If you got a girl that likes, let's get it on.
joe rogan
You got a good one.
sturgill simpson
I think she was 17 when he wrote that album for her.
unidentified
Really?
sturgill simpson
It was all about his little young mistress.
joe rogan
Ooh, Jesus, that's dark.
sturgill simpson
Telling her how much he wanted to do the deed.
joe rogan
Oof.
sturgill simpson
Full record.
joe rogan
Seventeen is so good.
sturgill simpson
There's a song called, You Really Love to Ball.
On the end of that album.
joe rogan
Really?
sturgill simpson
Yeah, and it's just like women moaning in orgasm.
Really?
That guy was fearless, man.
Who give a shit?
joe rogan
Well, he's just getting away with it, too.
At that time, he was probably selling so many records.
They're like, go ahead, Marvin.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
sturgill simpson
Millions and millions.
Didn't tour.
He never toured.
joe rogan
Really?
sturgill simpson
Yeah, hardly ever.
They couldn't drag him out on a stage.
joe rogan
No shit.
Really?
sturgill simpson
I think when Let's Get It On was blowing up, he was living in a cabin up on top of Topanga Canyon with his girlfriend and just hiding from the world doing blow.
Literally.
He played one concert that entire record cycle.
joe rogan
That's where everybody lived back then.
I saw Hendrix House was for sale a few years back.
It was a house that Hendrix bought, but he never moved into.
He bought it right before he died.
I'll take it.
Even if he didn't live there, I'm like, I'll still buy it.
I need to know.
Did he write something anywhere?
Was it in paper?
Did he walk in?
sturgill simpson
If he was there, he probably wrote something.
joe rogan
He must have bought it, so he had to look at it.
So if he looked at it, he was in there.
So he walked around.
I'll take it.
sturgill simpson
He probably boned the realtor.
I'll take it.
joe rogan
Well, there was a house that was for sale that was Wilt Chamberlain's house that had the whole deal.
It had a circular bed that spun around.
It was like the ultimate fuck castle.
And, you know, it was Wilt Chamberlain on his way to banging 10,000 different women, allegedly, according to him.
And he had just this insane bachelor pad that was just...
sturgill simpson
How did he get anything else done?
unidentified
Look at it.
joe rogan
Look at it.
That's his house.
Look at that bed.
That's the bed.
sturgill simpson
Dude, that looks like the...
On Enter the Dragon.
Mr. Han's fucking palace or something.
unidentified
Ah!
sturgill simpson
What's going on there, bro?
joe rogan
That's the 10th level of fuck.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, I'd be walking around in there trying to find myself in the mirrors.
Look at that shit.
joe rogan
A few years back, that house was for sale.
Is that the outside of it?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Wow.
How dope.
A few years back, the house was for sale.
It's an epic, epic house.
sturgill simpson
He's like, I'll fuck my dog, too.
I'm not afraid.
joe rogan
But they had a really hard time selling it because it was worth a lot of money.
sturgill simpson
Look at that place, man.
joe rogan
It was worth a lot of money, and it wasn't the kind of house that a normal person could live in.
It had like one bedroom.
sturgill simpson
Wilt Chamberlain's bungalow.
Did you see that?
joe rogan
No.
Look at that pool table.
It's like where his knees are.
It's hilarious.
I wonder if that house ever sold.
It might be one of those things that you just keep selling and buying, but it's really funky, like, modern for the 1980s looking.
sturgill simpson
It's a dope crib, man.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, man.
Look at that place.
It's all angular and shit, like a transformer.
sturgill simpson
Two and a half acres.
joe rogan
Like, you're expected to go...
sturgill simpson
What's something like that sell for now here?
Even if it wasn't Wilt Chamberlain's house, what's something like that?
joe rogan
That's a $10 million house.
Depending on where it is.
If that's in the Hollywood Hills, that fucking crazy palace with the way his pool is, like look at it.
I mean, that's a piece of art.
That's not just a house.
You'd have to have the right buyer.
What am I, a real estate guy?
Look at them, flipping houses all of a sudden?
What the fuck do I know?
unidentified
I don't even know how much toothpaste costs.
joe rogan
I'm telling you how much this house is.
I like to say 10 million though.
It's a good number.
Want to say it's a dope house?
No less than 10 million.
jamie vernon
In 2007, it was 10.5 million.
unidentified
See?
joe rogan
Bitch, I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.
Come on, man.
10.5 is negotiating.
That's the wiggle room.
unidentified
It's down from 11.5.
joe rogan
So it's sold?
jamie vernon
This was like eight years ago.
joe rogan
That's how much it was for sale?
unidentified
Uh-huh.
jamie vernon
It was listed at 11.5.
unidentified
Oh.
And then it was down to 10.5, so it might still be available.
joe rogan
Nah, I bet.
Well, I bet a house like that, people buy it and they go, what the fuck are we doing here?
Let's make some money.
unidentified
It's in Bel Air.
joe rogan
And then they sell that thing.
Oh, Bel Air.
Yeah, that's an expensive neighborhood.
Dope views.
Must be good to be Will Chamberlain back with no internet, no Twitter, no Facebook.
Just all dick.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, those guys really just, I mean, free-for-all.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
Come on, man.
It's chaos.
The president, President Kennedy was on a free-for-all.
I mean, imagine that.
The president just going buckwheat.
What's amazing is that everyone in the news, like all the reporters, they all knew it.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, they didn't talk about it.
joe rogan
There was no stories written about it.
I wonder what that shift was.
The shift was in America where they decided that they were just going to talk about everything.
Like, what caused the shift?
sturgill simpson
Once they knew it sold.
joe rogan
Yeah, I guess so, right?
sturgill simpson
Once they figure out that's all people want is gossip.
joe rogan
What do you think it was?
Like, once there was too many different distribution methods?
It seems like that's what it is, right?
Like, if you only have, like, a couple of different newspapers and a couple of different television shows, it can all be kind of controlled.
sturgill simpson
I mean, monopolize, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, and you also put pressure on the reporters probably to not reveal that stuff.
sturgill simpson
Wiki leaks and that kind of shit.
I mean, it's, you know...
There was something on the radio in the car when I was coming here about...
There was a big document released today.
joe rogan
Panama leak?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I haven't gotten into it.
sturgill simpson
I just heard the Cliff Notes, but it sounds pretty heavy.
joe rogan
It's supposed to be the biggest leak of documents ever.
sturgill simpson
Millions of pages?
joe rogan
Yeah.
And apparently it just shows all this crazy collusion between world leaders and...
Financial institutions.
sturgill simpson
I used to obsess about that shit and I wanted to know, you know, like, man, but now at this stage in my life, I mean, I just go ahead and assume that it's all fucking crooked.
joe rogan
It is definitely all crooked, but you know what I think, man?
I don't even think, I mean, I think everybody's got to pay attention to it, obviously.
I mean, we're all paying attention to it, but...
I don't think it's sustainable.
I don't think you could do it anymore.
I think these leaks are going to come more and more frequently, and they're going to be more and more accessible and more and more easy to get.
I just don't think you're going to be able to fuck people like that anymore.
I just don't think you could do it.
sturgill simpson
Even the government?
joe rogan
I don't think they could do it anymore.
I think what they're doing now, even right now, they're like clinging, just hanging on to this thing while it's shaking apart around them.
sturgill simpson
The Apple fiasco and all that?
joe rogan
They're not supposed to be in control of us, man.
That's the bottom line.
You're not supposed to be in control of Jamie.
Jamie's not supposed to be in control of me.
And the government's not supposed to be in control of you.
There's supposed to be some operating principles that we all commune under.
And our community should be established in a way that benefits us, not the big banks, not the politicians, not fucking Hillary Clinton giving $250,000 speeches to a bunch of Wall Street people.
That's all nonsense.
And that's some old shit that we just assume we have to stay with because it's been this way from the jump.
It's been this way since we were kids.
Well, my parents grew up with it and this is the system.
Bullshit.
They're staying with this system, not because it's the best, but because they figure out the best way to extract money from it.
You're not going to be able to do it.
It's not going to happen.
Once President Trump gets in office...
Everyone's gonna realize what a fucking goddamn joke of a system we've put in place, and there'll be some real talk about having some kind of a radical reform.
unidentified
Viva Vladimir Putin!
sturgill simpson
Like, what if they could just fire members of the Senate or the House of Representatives or Congress?
joe rogan
Probably a good idea.
sturgill simpson
You're fired, you know?
You can't just say, we're not gonna do our jobs.
joe rogan
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
You know?
joe rogan
Well, there's just too many people that you don't know that have any say whatsoever on how you live your life.
The idea that the Senate or that Congress or that the Supreme Court or any of these people could sit down and decide what you can and can't do with your body, what substances you can or can't put into them, what shouldn't and shouldn't be illegal.
You shouldn't be able to decide that.
sturgill simpson
That Nixon thing the other day was pretty interesting about where they were just like, yeah, this shit doesn't do anything.
We just, you know...
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, tell people what it was.
sturgill simpson
There was a former aide, I think.
Was that right?
Somebody basically came out and said that the war on drugs was propagated to suppress minorities and...
joe rogan
Anti-war movement.
sturgill simpson
Anti-war movement.
And they knew that there was no threat there and that it wasn't doing anything harmful to people.
And basically they're on tape talking about it and laughing.
joe rogan
Unbelievable.
sturgill simpson
Somebody on Late Night the other night, when it came out, they said it perfectly.
Even from the grave, that guy manages to cultivate more fucking hatred.
joe rogan
He was so crazy.
sturgill simpson
Dude, what an evil bastard.
joe rogan
Here it goes.
Last week, a quote from Richard Nixon's former chief domestic advisor, John Erichman?
Eh, E-H-R-I... C.H. Erichmann surfaced, confirming a disgusting truth that's been very well known by black folks for several decades.
The war on drugs had nothing to do with eradicating a drug epidemic.
Instead, it was a ploy to hide for the intentional targeting and decimating of the black community.
unidentified
Well, as well as- This next paragraph is the real thing.
Yeah.
joe rogan
This is Erichmann's words.
He said, the Nixon campaign in 1968 and the Nixon White House after that Had two enemies, the anti-war left and black people.
You understand what I'm saying?
We knew that we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and the blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.
Wow.
We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Holy fucking shit.
Did we know we were lying about drugs?
Of course we did.
Whoa.
Damn!
That's dark.
That guy's only concentrating on black people, though.
Did you go to an all-black site?
That guy just wants to talk about the black part.
He's got a big, smiling black face.
The whole thing's disgusting.
It's disgusting that we live under the echoes of all these morons that were running the country back then.
All these creeps that could get away with shit.
Just like Wilt Chamberlain's up there banging up a storm and Marvin Gaye's coked up in Topanga Canyon with a 17-year-old.
You can get away with anything back then.
sturgill simpson
Apparently you still can't.
joe rogan
R. Kelly.
Holla.
R. Kelly allegedly.
But that's, you know.
unidentified
If you're Dick Cheney, you could just shoot people in the fucking face, man.
sturgill simpson
Literally.
joe rogan
Yeah, literally.
Well, do you know what he was doing?
It's a canned hunt.
Those are weird, man.
Do you know what that is?
sturgill simpson
That's where they go out and you're basically guaranteed a trophy.
joe rogan
No, man.
They're bird hunting.
So what happens is they go out and they open up these fucking boxes of birds and the birds fly out and they shoot them.
sturgill simpson
And he still shot somebody in the face?
joe rogan
He still shot somebody in the face!
And he didn't talk about it.
He wouldn't talk to anybody for like 16 hours afterwards.
sturgill simpson
He was probably hammered.
joe rogan
He was hammered.
sturgill simpson
Oh, man.
joe rogan
Most likely he was hammered.
Allegedly.
Allegedly.
Can he still sue even though he doesn't have a heart?
He has like an artificial heart.
Is he still allowed to sue?
But he shot his friend in the face and his friend apologized.
That's how fucking gangster Dick Cheney is.
sturgill simpson
Wow.
joe rogan
His friend was like 60. Walked it off.
sturgill simpson
I'm really sorry.
I walked in front of your bullets, bro.
joe rogan
Yeah.
They were probably lit out of their fucking mind.
And you want to talk about PTSD? Do you imagine the demons inside the brain of Dick Cheney?
Just knowing what he knows, could you imagine?
I mean, if that guy has an ounce of self-realization, an ounce of objectivity, of introspective thought, where he really thinks about it, did I do the right thing?
Do you think that weapons of mass destruction, do you think that was cool?
Was that okay?
sturgill simpson
There's only a few hundred thousand innocent.
joe rogan
A million people died, but it was probably for the best historically.
I mean, they were going to die anyway.
It's not like there are a million immortals, right?
I mean, what...
sturgill simpson
Do you ask him, do I think?
joe rogan
No, I'm just thinking.
sturgill simpson
Former Vice President Dick Cheney seeks daily affirmation.
joe rogan
Well, he's a biblical character in that right after he had done all these things, right, he clearly pulled the strings to get us into Iraq and there's clearly financial motives.
I mean, he was the goddamn CEO of the company that got no bid, billion dollar contracts to rebuild.
sturgill simpson
For Palpatine, man.
He's a damn Sith Lord.
Bush, like him or hate him, he thought he was doing the right thing, you know, like the guy believed.
joe rogan
Well, this is the thing, the undeniable biblical thing about him.
So, the guy has a ton of heart attacks, right?
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
joe rogan
They replaced his fucking heart.
They replaced his valves with some machine.
And this machine constantly pumped blood to the point where he didn't have a pulse.
It was a constant flow.
So if you put your finger on Dick Cheney while he had this artificial heart in place, he wouldn't have a pulse.
sturgill simpson
Start with Vader.
joe rogan
He's Darth Vader.
sturgill simpson
He's fucking Darth Vader.
joe rogan
Darth Vader with the helmet.
sturgill simpson
He's like the old man of the era in Prometheus that was pretending to be dead and shit.
joe rogan
Make sure that's true.
I'm pretty sure I'm correct about that, Jamie.
Pull that up about Dick Cheney's heart being artificial and not having a pulse.
unidentified
Okay, yeah.
jamie vernon
I was just reading about the actual event and how it happened and he shot him in the face and they blamed the guy, Whittington is his name, for walking in front of him.
joe rogan
I'm a fucking idiot.
Listen, man, you don't point your gun where people are.
The guy didn't walk in front of you.
That's crazy.
As a person who fires guns, you don't ever point your gun anywhere near a person.
If a person walks in front, you pull your gun away from where that person is.
You have to be aware of your left and your right at all times.
You don't stand in front of somebody.
The guy didn't just...
It's not that guy's fault.
Bionic Dick Cheney technically has no pulse.
Here it goes.
During a recent heart surgery, doctors implanted a ventricular assist device to augment Cheney's failing ticker.
But it also gives his critics another punchline to work with because the device moves blood continuously.
It doesn't mimic the pulsating rhythm of the heartbeat.
Tactically speaking, Dick Cheney no longer has a pulse.
Insert Darth Vader comparisons here.
And this is in 2010.
sturgill simpson
And that dude's still kicking.
joe rogan
That's amazing, man.
I used to do this bit about Dick Cheney where he had one extra Secret Service agent.
Like, every other guy had five, but he had six.
And this one, they put him on this all-vegetarian diet, and they had the dude jogging every day.
He's like, why the fuck do I have to jog?
And there was always a guy behind them with a giant cooler filled with ice.
And the moment Dick Cheney has a heart attack, they were going to take that dude out, cut his chest open, shove his heart inside of Dick Cheney.
He's a dark guy, man.
He was the CEO of the company that profited the most from them blowing shit up in Iraq.
unidentified
Bro, uh...
sturgill simpson
Around the time that I was in the Navy, they re-implemented this anthrax vaccination policy.
I think they'd done it in the first Gulf War, too, and a lot of people think it's directly what's responsible for the Gulf War syndrome and all those guys dealing with chronic muscle spasms and fatigue.
joe rogan
Really?
sturgill simpson
So, yeah, but it came down the pipeline again.
They were going to make it a mandatory thing for everybody.
And then, I think in 98...
They recalled it, I can't remember, 98 or 99, but the Times and all these people had already kind of dug in and figured out that there was only one lab in the entire world authorized and regulated to manufacture the vaccine.
I think their lab was Bioport up in Michigan.
was a former admiral of the Navy and also on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
I think his last name was Crow.
And this guy, so you're telling me that dude didn't know that this contract, this major multi-billion dollar defense contract coming down the pipeline and then jumps in and buys this company, you know, to start pumping people with shit that they have no idea...
And they actually got, the lab got shut down while they're manufacturing all this stuff.
unidentified
Oh my god.
sturgill simpson
Who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people had to put that shit in their body, you know.
joe rogan
And they will fucking experiment on soldiers.
They have done it in the past.
The precedent has been set a long time ago.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
sturgill simpson
I remember boot camp, you go down this cattle line, and there's like six people, and you just keep going through, and you go through, and it's like, all these shots, guns.
I have no idea to this day what a lot of it even was, man.
unidentified
Really?
sturgill simpson
I got stationed overseas, so we had to take a bunch of typhoid, but there's a whole lot of shit.
They don't even tell you what they're putting in you, you know?
joe rogan
They don't have to tell you.
sturgill simpson
For a week, you can't lift your arms up.
unidentified
You know what I mean?
sturgill simpson
It's just like...
joe rogan
What the fuck is that?
They don't have to tell you.
They don't have to tell you.
That's crazy.
That they can just shoot vaccinations in you and they don't have to tell you what they're doing.
sturgill simpson
And if you refuse to take them, they put you in prison.
joe rogan
Really?
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
Or the brig, you know.
joe rogan
How long did they put you in for?
Until you give in?
sturgill simpson
No, I knew guys, I think it was like 90 days restriction.
unidentified
That's it?
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
joe rogan
And then they don't have to shoot you when you get out?
sturgill simpson
No, no.
No, it's not like that.
It's just one of those, but I mean, it was obviously about making money.
unidentified
Fuck.
sturgill simpson
Fuck.
Let's say you get hit with weaponized anthrax.
Even if you've been vaccinated, it's a spore.
It's a virus.
It's going to mutate as soon as it hits the air.
I guess the argument or the reasoning was that it might make you live 30 or 40 extra seconds longer so you can hit the button and launch some more missiles at them.
I don't know what the reasoning behind it was.
It was a big deal.
I remember when that story came out.
They found out that the Admiral owned the company.
You know what I mean?
It's like, wait a minute, what?
That's so crazy.
Is this legal?
joe rogan
That's so crazy.
sturgill simpson
I wonder if he took the shot.
joe rogan
I doubt it.
Well, I'd heard that Gulf War Syndrome was connected to depleted uranium.
Maybe it was several different factors.
sturgill simpson
Who knows, man.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Many different factors because they know that they definitely used depleted uranium in shells as anti-tank weapons.
That's been proven and that was something that they were never supposed to use.
And the half-life on that shit is something like 100,000 years or something nutty.
So there's these places in Iraq to this day that are just fucksville from these...
These depleted uranium shells slamming into tanks, and then soldiers would take pieces from those tanks as memories.
They'd take them home as souvenirs.
And so you're carrying something that's highly radioactive.
Like, those depleted uranium shells, it's like literally nuclear waste.
sturgill simpson
Right.
joe rogan
And they use that as a shell, and it just goes through everything.
I mean, you're harnessing the power of the sun to blow a hole through a jeep, and then these poor fuckers, you know, they stumble upon this jeep, and nobody had told them shit.
And they're, hey man, let's take this license plate home.
You shouldn't even be anywhere near that.
You shouldn't even be a mile away from that fucking Jeep.
Meanwhile, they're hanging around that goddamn thing.
sturgill simpson
Who knows, man.
My grandfather was in the South Pacific during World War II, and even as an older man, he must have gotten something in his blood over there, because it would be the middle of July, and he'd be sitting in the house with long johns and corduroy pants and a flannel shirt on talking about, I'm cold!
Jesus.
So, I mean, there must have been some kind of nerve gas or...
joe rogan
Well, maybe even just tropical diseases.
I talked to this guy.
He's an expert infectious diseases.
His name is Peter Hotez.
He's a professor, I think, at the University of Houston.
But he specializes in diseases that people get in tropical climates.
And he told me that when you look at a tropical environment, 100% of those people are infected with some sort of parasite.
unidentified
100%.
sturgill simpson
Just built up resistance to it.
joe rogan
Or not.
Or they're affected by it.
We were talking about all sorts of different moisture-borne bacterial diseases that people get from dirty water and stuff that you just get from bugs and you get from the air.
sturgill simpson
It's a jungle, man.
You're basically living in a Petri dish.
joe rogan
Yep.
sturgill simpson
New shit's coming to life every day.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I mean, if you think about the jungle, right?
If you go there and you see all that vegetation, right?
Everywhere around you is just life and crickets and bugs and snakes and spiders and cats and fucking sloths and eagles and monkeys and shit.
Whoa!
Like, there's so much life there that it's at a macro level, too.
It's at a micro level.
Like, there's life that you're not going to see.
It's going to get into your body.
sturgill simpson
Crawling up your asshole right now while you're swimming or, you know...
joe rogan
It becomes a part of you.
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, they have these parasites that become a part of you.
A buddy of mine got trichinosis.
sturgill simpson
Oh, dude.
joe rogan
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
Jesus.
joe rogan
He got trichinosis from eating bear meat that wasn't cooked that well.
Actually, he was on the show.
His name's Steve Rinelli.
He's a host of this show called Meat Eater.
And he was on the show with a bunch of other crew members.
They all ate this bear.
And they didn't cook it well.
They didn't cook it well enough.
And they were joking about getting trichinosis at the time.
So they all got trichinosis.
So they have these little tiny worms, these larvae, that are in their body forever.
sturgill simpson
Growing?
joe rogan
Well, they don't grow.
sturgill simpson
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
They just stay dormant in your body until someone comes along.
Say, if you ate Steve Rinella and you didn't cook him to 160 degrees, you would get trichinosis from him.
Like, it's in him.
sturgill simpson
Forever.
joe rogan
Yeah, just part of the deal.
And he said he was like really deathly sick for like seven days.
Felt like shit.
Like he had the flu.
And pain all the time.
He was aching in pain.
And then it went away.
And then you just deal with the fact that now you have trichinosis.
But, like, in these tropical environments, there's tons of people that have all sorts of crazy parasites in their body.
sturgill simpson
I mean, dysentery or malaria, any damn thing.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And some parasites, they're just starting to now understand.
There's parasites that affect behavior.
Like, there's some shit called toxoplasmosis.
Have you heard of that one?
The cat parasite?
sturgill simpson
Endoplasmosis.
You can fucking die from smelling bird shit, man.
Yes!
joe rogan
Dude, one of the creepiest stories I've ever heard was these guys in Africa.
They were standing in front of a cave.
I think it was Africa.
And they were standing in front of a cave.
And they were scientists.
And they wanted to photograph these bats flying out of the cave when they would go out at night.
Because, you know, the bats leave caves en masse.
And there was millions of bats, literally millions of bats in this cave.
And so they parked out in front of this cave.
sturgill simpson
Millions of piles of batshit too.
unidentified
Exactly.
joe rogan
They got shit on.
That's what they didn't anticipate.
sturgill simpson
While they're flying out of the cave, they just got shit all over.
joe rogan
They got shit on and they got deathly ill and they were dead within weeks.
Both guys died.
sturgill simpson
Oh yeah, I saw a thing on TV about that.
joe rogan
Yeah, they died from hemorrhagic viruses, which means they start bleeding out of their fucking eyeballs.
sturgill simpson
That's what you get for going and looking in bat caves, man.
joe rogan
Well, bring that raincoat, son.
sturgill simpson
Some goggles.
joe rogan
Yeah, man.
You gotta...
Don't eat it.
Definitely don't eat it.
But it gets in your skin.
Like, you can't have that shit on your skin.
Like, you can get sick just from it contacting your face.
A bat...
Dirty bat shit shits on your face?
You could probably die.
sturgill simpson
I'd want to.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, man.
There's so many parts of the world where there's so much life and that life is so much more dangerous.
We're just so used to life being like, oh, look at the squirrel.
I love wildlife.
Look at that bird.
So cute.
Look at that.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, you always hear about these people like talking about going down to Ecuador and Peru to do ayahuasca.
I'm like, fuck that.
I don't want to go out there in that damn jungle with all those bugs and caterpillars and shit.
Snakes crawling up my leg.
joe rogan
They say that's part of the experience is going to the jungle, but yeah, you can do that in Malibu.
You can do it in Malibu.
sturgill simpson
I'm good, man.
joe rogan
You can just sit down in the house.
sturgill simpson
I'll do the cliff notes.
joe rogan
The cliff notes is DMT. Man, I think going to the jungle would probably be pretty badass, but you have to have a thermostat with you.
Yeah, you have to have people that are awake with spotlights and guns.
Yeah.
You don't want to be that one dude that goes to South America and gets jacked by a leopard.
sturgill simpson
I'll just sleep in this tree.
joe rogan
Jaguar.
sturgill simpson
Jaguar.
joe rogan
Jaguar South America, right?
Leopards Africa?
Asia?
sturgill simpson
That sounds right.
joe rogan
Yeah, man.
sturgill simpson
This has been a National Geographic podcast, man.
joe rogan
They oftentimes are.
sturgill simpson
You know a guy named Steve Mears?
joe rogan
Mears?
How do you spell his last name?
sturgill simpson
He's a British guy.
He's like a naturalist.
He's probably a master survivalist, but...
I think it's Mears.
Look it up.
Steve Mears, man.
You should try to get him on the show sometime.
I used to sit and just watch hours of YouTube videos.
You can just tell he's just a beautiful human being, but he knows all about...
It's like Bear Grylls and Mr. Rogers.
You know what I mean?
joe rogan
Combined together?
sturgill simpson
But a little more legit on the knowledge side.
unidentified
Really?
joe rogan
Than Bear Grylls?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Bear Grylls was legit, but Bear Grylls got compromised by Hollywood.
Do you know why Bear Grylls got that show?
sturgill simpson
I have no idea.
joe rogan
I'll give you some information.
sturgill simpson
Drinking his piss?
joe rogan
Nope.
Les Stroud, survivor man, did not want to fake anything.
Les Stroud did all his own shit.
He went by himself.
He put himself in dangerous situations.
He lost tons of weight on camera.
He was literally starving to death.
He documented the entire thing.
By himself.
100% by himself.
Encounters with wild animals, like really dangerous situations, almost starving to death, almost freezing to death, having to make fire on your own, and going there with a very limited amount of things to keep.
Like he would go there with like a pocket knife, he would allow himself some string that he could go fishing with, go.
And he would stay for seven days and have a drop-off point.
Where they would drop him off, then a pickup point.
And if he didn't go to the pickup point, then they'd have to go looking for him.
But they wanted to fake stuff.
And Bear Grylls filled that gap.
Because Les wouldn't fake anything.
He's like, no, we're not bringing a camera crew, because then it's not me by myself.
You lose all of what makes the show special.
So what he did is just a bunch of things that they set up.
If I found this sheep, I could take it and make a coat.
You know, like, they put the sheep there.
They killed the sheep.
They did it for them.
unidentified
Better drink my piss.
joe rogan
Like, he'd be, like, doing all these stunts, like, jumping from tree to tree.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, unnecessary risks.
joe rogan
Look at him, hanging out with hippos.
unidentified
Is it this guy?
sturgill simpson
No.
jamie vernon
His name's Steve Blackshaw.
sturgill simpson
I can't find a Steve...
joe rogan
What was his last name?
sturgill simpson
Ray Mears.
Ray Mears.
joe rogan
This guy's hanging out with hippos.
That guy's insane.
sturgill simpson
Ray Mears.
Gangster.
joe rogan
There's a show called Carter's War, and it's this show about this guy who is an anti-poaching guy.
He's an official in Africa, and he tries to prevent them from poaching all these animals.
A lot of it is for the Asian market for rhino horn and a bunch of these different animals that they want ivory from.
Rhino horn's a big one, though.
They keep finding these rhinos.
It's a fucking sobering show man for two reasons one because you see what people are willing to do these animals Just shoot them in the head and cut their fucking horns off and cut half their face off like a chainsaw and shit It's crazy.
And then also you see how fucking poor these people are And then you realize like they of course they're gonna do that and Like, if they can shoot that rhino and make $50,000 from its magic horn, you know, or whatever the fuck they make, they probably make 50 bucks, you know?
But if they can make that, and it's between them starving and not starving, like, that's literally what you're looking at.
sturgill simpson
Yep.
Everything's subjective.
joe rogan
Is this the gentleman?
sturgill simpson
That's him.
unidentified
This show's called Bushcraft.
sturgill simpson
Bushcraft.
joe rogan
He's hanging out with a wolf.
Look at this motherfucker.
He knows the wolves.
sturgill simpson
He's like the most unassuming guy ever, but he's so badass, dude.
joe rogan
It's called Bushcraft?
sturgill simpson
Bushcraft, yeah.
joe rogan
Is it an English show or an Australian show?
unidentified
It's English.
Yeah, on the BBC, I believe.
joe rogan
Oh, man.
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
Dude will just walk out in the woods with nothing but a damn metal pot.
joe rogan
Oh, there he is.
sturgill simpson
What's he keeping there?
joe rogan
A fish?
Looks like some piece of meat or something they got.
Yeah, these guys that are into, like, surviving on their own, like, they take great pleasure with that.
They're always fascinating.
sturgill simpson
He's really more of a naturalist, too.
Like, fauna and natural vegetation and finding, foraging food on your own.
It's a lot more useful information than just, okay...
You got three days.
Drink your piss and don't get eaten by an alligator.
unidentified
There we go.
sturgill simpson
It's like, no, man.
joe rogan
Well, Survivorman came up, Les came up with all that on his own.
It's his concept.
Because he was actually living in the forest with his pregnant wife.
The two of them there by themselves when he was a younger man.
Like, he did this on his own before he was famous.
Like, he's been doing this forever.
sturgill simpson
What's his background?
Where'd he learn it all?
joe rogan
I don't know, man.
That's a good question.
He told me.
I forgot.
I think he just learned.
sturgill simpson
No, I remember watching the show.
That dude is suffering.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, man.
sturgill simpson
For those 30 minutes of viewing entertainment.
joe rogan
He's got this wacky thing he's doing now, though.
He's looking for Bigfoot.
He's got a Survivor Man.
Bigfoot is like the biggest thing since sliced bread.
sturgill simpson
Leavenworth, Washington.
joe rogan
That's where he is?
sturgill simpson
That's where he's at.
joe rogan
Do you see him?
sturgill simpson
Yeah, so we got a cup of coffee on South Road one day and this lady had a whole photo album full of pictures of Bigfoot in her backyard.
It looked like some bullshit.
joe rogan
Like her neighbor jacking off?
unidentified
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
She's selling coffee though.
joe rogan
I talked to one lady when I was doing this sci-fi show when we did a whole episode on Bigfoot.
One lady that I really believe saw something.
I really believe she did.
But what I think she probably saw was a black bear.
Because black bears walk on their hind legs.
There's video of black bears walking like a hundred yards on their hind legs.
sturgill simpson
What makes you believe her?
joe rogan
She was very earnest in what she was talking about and was sensational in any way at all.
What she was telling me was pretty straightforward.
And I also believe her because there's black bears in that area.
It's incredibly densely wooded.
Like the area that she's talking about was the Pacific Northwest.
unidentified
Oh yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
That's some wilderness, man.
joe rogan
I guess Mount Rainier.
Is that Mount Rainier that's right outside of Washington?
Right outside of Seattle?
It's gorgeous up there.
sturgill simpson
If that big hairy fucker is real, that's the only place he could possibly exist.
Because you could absolutely disappear in that forest, man.
That's some dense, dense wilderness.
joe rogan
And filled with food.
Filled with food.
Filled with wild game.
sturgill simpson
That's definitely not me saying I believe in Bigfoot.
joe rogan
Yeah.
All right.
You're 100% correct though.
If there was an animal like that, that would be the spot.
It also would be the spot because that's the spot where it would make sense geographically.
My feeling is, what I believe, I bet it used to be real.
Because at one point in time there was a thing called Gigantopithecus that lived in Asia.
It was as recently as 100,000 years ago.
Which is not that long.
And that was when the Bering Strait was connected.
So Asia and the United States, you could actually walk from Asia to the United States.
The land mass was in place and the Ice Age was all frozen over.
So during that time, it would have been entirely possible.
Because so many Native American cultures have names for that animal.
They have names for this man that lives in the forest.
sturgill simpson
Yeti, you know, house the same legend on the other side of the world about some crazy...
joe rogan
Well, and it was real.
sturgill simpson
Right.
joe rogan
And then also on top of that thing being real, they also know that there was those little hobbit people in the island of Flores.
And the theory about that thing is that it's either the most recent one, they think that it might have been as recently as 50,000 years ago, but I think they thought it was like 14,000 years ago until recently.
Look at this.
That's a bear, dude.
That is a bear.
Look at that.
That's a real, legit black bear.
So, imagine if you saw that.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
You'd say, well, for sure that's Bigfoot.
sturgill simpson
Especially that last little frame.
joe rogan
See, when bears hurt their paw, like if they get bitten in their paw and their paw gets infected, they can walk on their back legs.
And they can do it for hundreds of yards.
So, I think she saw that.
sturgill simpson
Just when you thought they couldn't get any scarier.
joe rogan
There's a bunch of videos of bears doing that.
It's not just that one bear.
So there's a lot of evidence that bears walk like that.
So this one lady that I talked to, I bet she saw a black bear that was walking on its hind legs.
That's what I bet.
It only makes sense.
You can't see anything in there anyway.
That's the thing about those woods.
You lived up there, right?
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
For a minute, yeah.
joe rogan
You can't see shit in those woods.
unidentified
No.
sturgill simpson
We used to go up.
There's like a little weird Swiss mountain ski town called Leavenworth.
I don't know, a buddy of mine.
We drove up there on our way to Vancouver to go partying.
That was like farther east, I think.
But it was like, you know, in the middle of nothing, man.
Just trees.
joe rogan
Right.
sturgill simpson
You could just walk off into it and disappear.
Right.
joe rogan
Well, Les, when he was camping, he was doing an episode of Survivor Man, and he was up in Alaska.
And he says that he heard some noise outside of his tent, and he barely moved.
He didn't want to move.
He wanted to see if he could get to his camera and try to record this.
And he heard something that sounded like a primate.
Something like...
Made like some primate type noise.
And then when he went to open up his tent and look outside, the thing took off.
Took off running.
And he said it sounded like bipedal footprints.
Like a large, heavy, bipedal thing.
The problem is, I've heard bears make that kind of sound.
I've heard them personally.
Seen them with my eyes, fighting with each other.
They go...
They make almost like a gorilla sound.
And they're...
They're attacking each other, and they're like...
They were making this crazy noise.
It was a mother trying to keep a male bear away from her cubs.
And they fought.
They fought right in front of us.
Like, within a hundred yards, I watched them duke it out UFC style.
sturgill simpson
Where were you?
joe rogan
Alberta.
I was watching it go down.
sturgill simpson
Shit, man.
joe rogan
So, I've heard bears make like a monkey sound.
sturgill simpson
That makes much more practical sense to me than a 7 foot tall Chewbacca that no one's ever seemed to be able to play eyes or hands on.
We got drones now, man.
joe rogan
I wanted to believe so bad.
That's the one thing I want to believe in almost as much as aliens.
As UFO reports, aliens and UFOs are like the one-two punch for what you want to believe in.
sturgill simpson
Man?
Yeah.
joe rogan
Other than love.
sturgill simpson
Well, that too.
It's all about love, bro.
I don't know.
We don't want to go down that rabbit hole.
joe rogan
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
Black holes and infinite multiverses.
unidentified
Well, I, without a doubt, think it's just definitely life out there.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, but, yeah.
I guess the question is, why would they fucking care?
joe rogan
Well...
sturgill simpson
Or maybe they do.
I mean, this is pretty interesting.
I'd watch it.
Oh, for sure.
joe rogan
I mean, come on, man.
We study turtles.
You know?
Dudes travel to the jungle to study a fucking butterfly.
sturgill simpson
Some heavy stuff going on on the back of a turtle, Joe Rogan.
joe rogan
That's true.
Not to demean turtles.
Look, if turtles were on the moon, oh my god, we'd be flying jets to visit them every day.
sturgill simpson
Oldest known species on Earth.
They outdate crocodiles.
joe rogan
Really?
unidentified
Really?
Whoa.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, turtles.
Been around longer than any other living creature on the planet.
joe rogan
They're like nail clippers.
They never had to make them any better.
sturgill simpson
That's a perfect design.
joe rogan
Yeah, like when I was a kid, nail clippers were exactly the same.
They haven't done anything.
I mean, they've made better can openers.
They've made better Tupperware.
sturgill simpson
Yeah.
joe rogan
They've improved almost every aspect.
I guess steak knives are pretty much the same.
sturgill simpson
Even the number of the shell, the symmetrical patterns of the shell, there's 13, no matter how big they are or small.
A lot of the Indians believe that that coincided with the 13 lunar cycles of the moon.
I made a whole album cover all about this shit.
I was just like, how weird can we get with this thing?
Let's just make the tackiest record cover ever.
joe rogan
They are a very fascinating creature.
I mean, anytime you see patterns, like even like a nautilus shell, you see these patterns, these repeating patterns that the animals have, like, you know, okay, well, why is there some sort of a geometric pattern into this animal's design?
You know?
sturgill simpson
It's almost fractal, really.
joe rogan
Oh, it is, yeah.
Well, it's a Fibonacci sequence.
The Fibonacci sequence manifests itself in, like, sunflowers.
Like, they say, like, if you look at a pine cone, the Fibonacci sequence is in a pine cone.
It's a sequence of numbers, like zero, and then there's one, and then there's two, and one plus two, and then there's three, and three plus two is five, and then five plus three is eight, and it keeps going on and on and on, and it's this exponential equation.
And when you're adding all those things up, that same sequence can be found in the shape of people's faces and honeycombs and a bunch of different designs, like pinecones.
There you see, Jamie's got some stuff they pull up with it.
The Fibonacci numbers in nature.
There's this crazy green fruit that's always at my...
It might be a vegetable.
That's it.
What is that fucking thing?
That fruit...
sturgill simpson
Broccoli.
joe rogan
What is it?
unidentified
Romanesque broccoli.
joe rogan
Romanesque broccoli.
It's like the DMT fruit.
When you look at that, that is fractal geometry in fruit form.
Or in vegetable form, rather.
Really weird.
But that's the Fibonacci sequence.
Like, if you go to the very top, and you see how small it is, see?
And then as it tapers down, it gets larger, and the numbers all exponentially increase.
It's just so fascinating.
sturgill simpson
Tool incorporates a lot of that in the time signatures of their music, man.
I got really into that band for a while when I was younger.
joe rogan
Do you know that Maynard Key is going to fight Ronda Rousey in an MMA match?
sturgill simpson
I did not know that.
joe rogan
And if he loses, he's getting a sex change.
sturgill simpson
You're bullshitting me?
joe rogan
Of course I am.
I'm trying to help spread a rumor.
sturgill simpson
Awesome.
joe rogan
I'll show you some pictures afterwards.
sturgill simpson
Is he like a jujitsu guy?
joe rogan
Yeah.
I believe he's got his purple belt.
I'm pretty sure he's got his purple belt.
But he's very dedicated.
He's so dedicated he got a hip replacement and went back to training.
sturgill simpson
Badass.
joe rogan
Here it goes.
sturgill simpson
Interesting cat, man.
unidentified
Look at him.
sturgill simpson
Awesome.
joe rogan
He's a fucking character.
I love that dude.
sturgill simpson
You ever met him?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
I hung out with him.
sturgill simpson
Really?
joe rogan
He's been on the show a couple times.
He's a good dude.
sturgill simpson
Great lyricist, man.
When I lived out there, there was all kinds of music I just discovered that I probably never would have gotten into otherwise.
And that band, I really had a little phase.
Lyrically speaking, I thought it was some of the more cathartic and sardonic stuff I'd ever heard.
Really intelligent way of saying things.
I was never a metal guy.
joe rogan
He's almost too smart for his own good.
He's one of those guys, when you talk to him like this, you might be just in your own way all the time.
sturgill simpson
Right.
joe rogan
So, it's one of the reasons why I think he decided to start a wine business.
In the middle of nowhere, just like...
And his wine is fucking excellent.
I don't know if you're a wine person, if you like wine, but caduceus wine...
I just know what I like, and I love it.
It's great.
He has a bunch of different kinds of wines, but he's a legit wizard when it comes to winemaking.
He really knows his shit inside and out.
It's not like some sort of thing that he lends his name to, you know, like fucking Orson Welles, we'll sell no wine before it's time.
No, this is his wine company.
Like, he has created it.
And he's also, like, figured out a way to cultivate grapes in this very weird spot in Arizona...
Well, I don't think anybody was doing it before him.
sturgill simpson
So he had to start the thing from scratch.
joe rogan
Oh yeah, he did the whole thing from scratch.
sturgill simpson
Doesn't that take like years?
joe rogan
Yes, he's been doing it for years.
He's nuts, man.
We've had some long-ass conversations about it.
Yeah, he's one of the coolest people that I talk to all the time.
sturgill simpson
Wow, that's ballsy, man.
I might be wrong, but I think you have to bring in a couple...
Harvests and then you won't even know if the grapes are going to be any good.
unidentified
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
If that's a good spot for it.
So you're putting all this money up.
joe rogan
Well, you have to analyze the soil and you have to know what you're doing as far as fertilizing it.
There's so many factors involved in how to...
I mean, it's an art.
It's a crazy art that you wind up eating.
You wind up drinking at the very end of it.
But creating the taste...
It's like the expression of the art instead of an audible thing, like a song...
It becomes a palette thing, but it's very much like the way he creates music.
He creates this wine, and it's a form of art.
It's like a mass-produced, not mass-produced, you know, like Coca-Cola, but he's making more than one bottle.
He's got several acres, and he creates this art, and you experience that art.
Instead of listening to a CD, you're experiencing that art when you drink his wine.
Very fascinating guy, man.
sturgill simpson
He just played in Nashville not too long ago.
I was on tour, or I probably would have gone.
But yeah, I'd say top five shows of all time in my life.
Tool is probably at least two of those spots.
joe rogan
Really?
sturgill simpson
Yeah, dude.
unidentified
Wow.
sturgill simpson
Yeah, I mean, they're so incredibly tight live, just aesthetically in the presentation.
Most big, loud metal shows, it's just this like...
joe rogan
Right, right.
sturgill simpson
It was pristine, sound-wise.
The drummer's a machine.
joe rogan
Yeah.
sturgill simpson
Danny Carey.
joe rogan
I wouldn't put them in a metal category.
Maybe I'd be wrong.
sturgill simpson
I don't know what you'd call it.
It was so unique.
I remember hearing it.
I'm thinking that's very...
Some complex shit going on, man.
joe rogan
Yeah, we're talking about motivating songs.
That riff in the song Prison Sex.
You know, the beginning...
When you're lifting weights and that comes on, you can lift more weights, man.
You can lift more weights.
You feel stronger.
unidentified
You're like...
joe rogan
If you're tired, you're on the elliptical machine, that comes on and you're like...
You can fucking push through.
I mean, it does something to your body.
It energizes you.
It's a real feeling that you get.
We don't think of it as a real feeling because you can't put it on a scale.
sturgill simpson
Very visceral music.
joe rogan
Yeah, something's happening to you when you listen to a jam that's done correctly.
sturgill simpson
Oh, I mean, you hate to think about it.
I think those guys actually experimented with frequencies and a lot of those deep down pitch tunings and time signatures are very, very, very Eastern and melodian time signatures that they're alternating in the off-down beat.
It's some heavy shit, man.
unidentified
Heavy shit.
sturgill simpson
Heavy, heavy.
They put thought into that music.
joe rogan
Well, the one song that they orchestrated to the Fibonacci sequence...
sturgill simpson
But you can totally manipulate human emotions with tones and keys and vibrations.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, man.
Well, have you ever fucked around with binaural beats?
sturgill simpson
I mean, not for fun or like on record?
joe rogan
Either, but for fun.
I haven't done it either way.
But I know that it's real.
I mean, I know that people swear by it.
It affects your brainwaves.
sturgill simpson
There's a reason all these trials throughout history out in the middle of nowhere banging on drums when they're doing their thing.
joe rogan
Fuck yeah, man.
There's Icaros.
Icaros.
I don't know how they say it.
unidentified
Icaros.
joe rogan
But you play when you do DMT and the DMT entities dance to the Icaros.
I mean, like, it's a part of the thing.
Like, when you do them together, then you understand.
If you listen to the music independently, you're like, fucking weird music.
It's kind of trippy, but it's weird.
I'll play you some of that.
sturgill simpson
Do you think that shit's meant for people that...
joe rogan
100%.
unidentified
Yeah?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, this is created by a shaman.
The one that I have on my phone that I play is created by a shaman.
It's by this guy.
Let me see if I have his homeboy's name in here.
I think his name is actually on the recording itself.
Let me find it here.
Goddammit, I don't have it on this one.
sturgill simpson
Well, I was going to say that you think it's meant, I mean, other than the people who are naturally from those areas where these things grow out of the ground and occur and they use them to connect with, I don't know, religious level, their spirit animals and things they believe in.
But, you know, like the tourists going down there and drinking that shit.
How do you feel about that?
joe rogan
Well, it's like everything else.
You're going to get legit ones, and then you're going to get people that realize there's a lot of money and tourists coming out here and taking this wacky shit, and so they figure out how to make it.
So you're gonna get people that are taking advantage of people, you're gonna get people that are, you know, doing all sorts of negative shit, and then you're gonna get legit shaman, people that are legitimately involved in the spiritual quest of attaining enlightenment and reaching a neighboring dimension.
Like, they really believe that they're reaching a neighboring dimension.
That they're tapping into something that's around us all the time, but that we don't have access to in a normal state of consciousness.
And it's the well of souls that you're tapping into.
I mean, it's real easy to dismiss, especially for someone who's never experienced it.
It's real easy to dismiss and say it's all in your imagination.
But for someone who has experienced it, it's very difficult to accept.
And it's very difficult for you to say that you know for sure that it's all your imagination if you haven't experienced it.
I appreciate, from an intelligence standpoint, someone's perspective on it that hasn't experienced it.
But the reality is, until you know what you're talking about, until you've actually gone into that thing and know how titanically alien it is, You're really just saying things.
You're just making noises with your mouth.
There's no way you could know.
It's not like, well, I had a dream once, and it was kind of similar.
No, no, no.
You're not there anymore.
You go to a different place.
You experience a different reality.
sturgill simpson
More real than what we normally interpret as reality.
joe rogan
That's the most fucked up part about it is it's so much crisper and more vibrant and brighter and then reality itself seems muted in some odd way.
It's almost like we're like having sex with a condom on, you know, and a big thick fucking trash bag condom.
And when you pass through to whatever the fuck this other dimension is, That filter, the frosted window is removed, and you could see it all.
The fog's gone, the clouds are gone, and you just, boom, get shot through a cannon to the middle of reality.
And that middle of reality is some strange geometric living environment where there's no three-dimensional objects that aren't touching each other.
Everything is connected to everything else.
There's a bunch of different things.
They're constantly alternating all the time.
But there's no space between anything.
There's no space between you and me.
In that world, it doesn't exist.
There's no space.
Everything is everything.
It's all together.
It's all together.
And you feel all together, like for the first time ever.
You don't feel like you're sitting in Canoga Park in a chair with a roof over your head and above that roof is the sky and above the sky is the moon.
You don't feel that.
When you're in this, you feel like you feel down Infinite.
You feel to the left and to the right.
Infinite.
You feel above.
But you also feel like you're in a room.
And it feels fractal.
And it's fucking crazy.
So, I mean, it might all be in your imagination.
But my take on it has always been, even if it is...
Even if you're not going to a well of souls and experiencing God and experiencing purity and wisdom, it's the same exact experience as if you were.
So even if it is in your imagination, your imagination has...
unidentified
Pretty cool.
joe rogan
Some fucking amazing...
I mean, it might be that's what you're experiencing.
It very well might be.
You don't know.
And there's no way to tell.
And it's easy to be cynical.
It's easy to be dismissive.
It's easy to say, oh, come on, these fucking hippies.
They think they're experiencing God through some powder that they smoke.
Way to go, meathead.
Yeah, you really are.
I mean, it's cute.
It's fun to do.
It's easy to dismiss it.
But once you do it, there's no dismissing it when you're there.
There's no dismissing it.
sturgill simpson
There's no easy explanation.
joe rogan
There's no easy anything once you're there.
Once you're in there, you better let go, bitch.
You better let go.
You better not try to fucking wrap your head around this.
Just breathe and try not to freak out.
And with that note, ladies and gentlemen, what are you doing in town, man?
sturgill simpson
I gotta do...
I gotta.
I don't gotta do anything.
We are getting ready to put a record out.
And tomorrow we're taping a live show for a radio station.
And then Wednesday we're taping a song for Conan.
joe rogan
Oh, beautiful.
sturgill simpson
So just a little quick trip out.
Get to finally get the new band out of rehearsal space and see what's going on.
I'm excited.
joe rogan
Nice.
It was fun.
Last time I went with you to Conan.
Oh, yeah.
It was fun, man.
sturgill simpson
You know, those TV things, as they go, it's always a strange...
Dynamic, you know, even for performers, because you get there and you do it, and you wait, and you do it again for TV, and you wait, and you wait, and you wait.
But of all of the ones that we played, I think that one, and maybe it's just because it's in California, but there's a far more mellow, laid-back vibe.
joe rogan
I think Conan's a really nice guy.
sturgill simpson
The studio space is bigger.
A lot of the New York ones, it's still fun, but they're older, more tight buildings, and the Union crews are on a, you know, they're running it crack tight.
Right.
Which may be a better thing to keep your adrenaline up.
I've been sitting around all day, and then at 4.30, like, okay, you're on in two minutes.
By the way, millions of people are going to watch this.
joe rogan
So when is this going to be on?
sturgill simpson
That I'm not sure.
We're taping it because we're out here for the other thing, as opposed to waiting until the fall when we're actually here on tour.
So we just bring everybody out.
We've done it twice, but yeah, him and Andy, they've been great to us, man.
joe rogan
No, they're awesome, man.
He's a great guy.
He's a well-known, nice guy.
sturgill simpson
Really?
Yeah, it just seems like it.
joe rogan
You can tell he's doing the show.
sturgill simpson
He's a genuine music lover, too.
joe rogan
Listen, man.
It's always been fun.
We've got to do this more often.
Fuck yeah, Sturgill Simpson.
sturgill simpson
Apparently, I'll be coming here every once in a while.
unidentified
Keep it coming!
joe rogan
All right, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be back tomorrow with Kevin Rose.
See you there.
unidentified
Later.
Oh, yeah.
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