All Episodes
Oct. 25, 2022 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:53:28
Joe Rogan Experience #1887 - Maynard James Keenan
Participants
Main voices
j
joe rogan
01:10:14
m
maynard james keenan
01:38:43
Appearances
Clips
j
jamie vernon
00:06
| Copy link to current segment

Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!
joe rogan
Do you ever sauna?
unidentified
Do you do that?
maynard james keenan
I have a sauna, yeah.
unidentified
Yeah?
Do you use it?
maynard james keenan
Initially it had issues because it was like a janky-ass actual heater that died, and we had to try to get another one.
unidentified
Swap it out.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, we had to order another one.
No luck with that company, so we just...
It's like, oh, that company doesn't exist anymore.
And so, had to get a different one in there, but it's fine.
We just got done putting a bunch of the oil on it, sauna oil, because Arizona, the sun just cooks the fucking wood, so it was cracking in spaces.
joe rogan
The real hardcore folks, they use the wood-fired sauna, old school, like you're cooking pizza.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, well, they can do that.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
I'm not that guy.
joe rogan
Yeah, they sell those.
I'm like, that seems like a lot of work.
Plus, you gotta kill trees.
maynard james keenan
We use it quite a bit, actually, when it was running.
But then I was on the road, and then Harvest, we didn't bother with it until just now we got it back running.
joe rogan
It's so good for you, man.
It's so good.
I just got out.
I do it after every workout.
It's like religious.
I make sure I get in there right afterwards.
It's the best.
You're training hard there, fella.
Well, John Donaher teaching you finder points of triangles.
That was fun to watch.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I mean, it's hard on, as I discussed this before, being on the road is, it's hard to find consistent training.
Consistent training is your gym, that instructor in your city.
Your drive back and forth to your house, doing two classes a day maybe if you can.
You know, like that kind of thing.
But the road is inconsistent.
So the only consistency I can really rely on is picking a particular subject and going to people that I know that know how to do it.
joe rogan
Mmm.
maynard james keenan
Rather than allowing them to go, hey, I got this cool thing where you go upside down and stand on your head and do a backflip and, like, buggy choke.
Don't, please, I don't, I'm 58, please don't try to tell me what a buggy choke is right now.
joe rogan
You can't do a buggy choke?
maynard james keenan
I might, someday, but right now I just want to Fucking get the triangles right.
joe rogan
Buggy joke's a good thing to learn, though.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I want to learn it, but let me learn it when I'm going to spend three weeks on it and focused on it with somebody who understands the details, somebody who also understands the counters.
Because the counters end up being as important as understanding the actual...
joe rogan
Somebody caught a buggy choke recently in MMA, I think it was in Bellator, and the dude picked him up and slammed him.
maynard james keenan
And he's out.
joe rogan
Yeah, he got fucked up, and then he beat the shit out of him.
I was like, hmm, yeah, that makes sense.
Because it's like, you really are committed to that.
maynard james keenan
You've attached yourself to the person, and that they're big and strong and can drop you on some...
A surface.
joe rogan
You just don't have options like you do with a triangle.
You know, like if someone picks you up with a triangle, you drop down to the leg, you let go.
Like when you're in a buggy chair, you're kind of committed, I think.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe I should talk to like the Rotolo.
Yeah, this is it right here.
No, this is not it.
This is a different one.
But people are getting these left and right now.
You know, someone pulled one off in the UFC the other day, and people didn't even know what the fuck it was.
I had to kind of explain it.
I'm like, this is so fascinating that this is a technique that is, you know, for jujitsu, it's been around for like a year or so.
He's out cold.
For jujitsu, it's been around for years, rather.
But for MMA, it's just starting to be applied.
maynard james keenan
But the beautiful thing about, especially that high level of MMA, is that somebody's going to figure out how to counter it or prevent it, and then it's gone.
I mean, for a while, all of a sudden, people were catching the Von Flu, and then all of a sudden, people were like, no, no, we're going to counter that now.
But then every now and then...
joe rogan
Yeah, well, OSP's the master.
He's the best at it.
He's caught more of them than Von Flu.
Von Flu, I think, invented it.
But OSP, I think, has more than anybody.
He gets it all the time.
It's like, it's a natural instinct when someone takes you down to hang on to that guillotine.
You just want to have some sort of control over them.
And then all of a sudden, that person shifts weight.
And they're on top of you sideways, you're like, oh shit, then your arm is trapped.
maynard james keenan
Good night.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a nasty joke.
There's just, jujitsu is so beautiful.
It's so cool watching you guys today, like watching Donaher.
Like, I learned something, that position of the knee to the ear.
Like, I didn't know that.
I kind of did it anyway, but like watching, like he's so good at pointing out the finer details.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, he's just such a master.
What a fucking interesting person he is.
There's no John Donahers out there.
maynard james keenan
No.
joe rogan
Like if you said, I want a guy who was a professor of philosophy at Columbia University, who's a genius, who fell in love with jujitsu and is dedicated to it so much so that he walks around with a rash guard every day.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
He doesn't even have regular clothes!
maynard james keenan
I was just kidding myself.
Like, so John, are we gonna do gi or no gi?
joe rogan
I think he abandoned the gi a long time ago, right?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, he's like, no gi.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, you can do...
The good thing about doing the gi is you must be defensively responsible.
Because you can't get out of stuff.
You can't just power out of things.
You know, like there's certain techniques that you just, you know, when you get trapped in them, you really have to mind your P's and Q's when you get out if you have a gi.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
And, you know, I like training both because I like kind of training my mind to not rely on the gi.
But then when there's something like a lapel or, you know, a jacket or a gi available, then I've trained how to deal with that piece of fabric that's now a tool for you.
joe rogan
Well, I got very fortunate that I learned Gi from John-Jacques Machado.
And John-Jacques Machado only has one hand.
His left hand, he only has a thumb.
So John-Jacques game was always overhooks and underhooks and clinch.
And, you know, that's why he was so successful in Abu Dhabi in the early days because all of his strategy completely applied to no Gi.
You know, and so I sort of when I was training with gi with John Jacques and no gi with Eddie Bravo, I would do the same things.
I would just have to be more responsible defensively when I trained with the gi.
You just can't explode.
maynard james keenan
I got back problems.
I probably shouldn't train as much gi anyway because guys get a hold of it and then you're dealing with lower back.
joe rogan
Do you have back problems?
What kind of back problems do you have?
maynard james keenan
Just lower back stuff.
Trying to do all the...
Try it every...
It's just age and beat down and traveling.
You know, like on the bus.
Trying to describe...
I was just trying to describe bus life to your guys out there.
Like, you know, you're sleeping in kind of a coffin.
So it's kind of weird.
You can't really sit up because there's something above your head.
joe rogan
How much time do you spend on a bus?
maynard james keenan
Well, between every gig, unless there's a day off, so, you know, we're doing two on, three on, and you're sleeping on the bus.
But it's like, imagine sleeping, and then four people on each corner of your bed every 45 minutes just shaking it.
joe rogan
Fuck that.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
So you're, like, you're trying to get a solid seven, eight hours sleep, but you end up having to get 11 hours of sleep because three or four of that is you waking up in the middle of the night because you hit bumps.
Yeah.
Bad roads, you know.
joe rogan
So what do you do?
You have the driver drive you in the middle of the night?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, so after the show, you're in the bus and you're going to the next city.
And, you know, depending on the drive.
If it's, you know, four hours, six hours, eight hours, nine hours.
joe rogan
Yeah, I have friends who do that.
Like, Bert Kreischer does that.
That's his thing.
He loves tours and buses.
I'm not into it.
maynard james keenan
I don't love it.
I enjoy performing the songs.
The travel part is the most difficult part.
And then, you know, so you're in air-conditioned scenarios, so you're getting a little dehydrated.
You're trying to have to hydrate a little bit more than you normally would.
And you're having to perform that night.
So training can be difficult on the road.
So try to do whatever I can to get training in.
joe rogan
Yeah, I admire people that just hit gyms, like random gyms to show up at places when they're on the road.
That's a bold move.
You never know who you're going to train with.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, and I'm a pussy that way, for sure.
People that I know, I have the mats, they come to me, or if I'm going to a place, it's because I know the person.
joe rogan
Do you weight train at all?
maynard james keenan
Not much.
I used to a little bit.
joe rogan
It's really good for preventing injuries.
When you're talking about your lower back situation, I'll show you some stuff, some of the equipment we have out there afterwards.
maynard james keenan
Is it like kettlebell stuff?
joe rogan
Kettlebell stuff's great.
But for the lower back, there's a machine called the reverse hyper that we have out there.
maynard james keenan
Okay.
joe rogan
That's phenomenal because it decompresses your back and it also strengthens all the muscles around it.
maynard james keenan
Alright.
joe rogan
It was invented by Louie Simmons, who's this genius.
That's Louie right there.
Rest in peace.
maynard james keenan
Hi, Louie.
joe rogan
He has left us and gone on to the next stage of existence.
But that machine he developed because Louis was like a world famous power lifter and his back got fucked and they told him to get his back fused because it was compressed and so he figured out a way to decompress the spine With active decompression.
So that thing, as it swings down, and you'll feel it, I'll show it to you afterwards when we go into the gym, that thing decompresses your spine on the downswing, and then on the upswing, it actually strengthens the muscles around the back.
Anybody that has the room for it and has some issues with their lower back, even if you don't have issues, if you don't want to ever have issues, I can't recommend that machine enough.
It's phenomenal feedback.
maynard james keenan
I will take that advice.
joe rogan
I just feel like when you get to our age, you must weight train.
I don't think it's an if and or but.
I think you have to do it.
Because otherwise you lose muscle density, you lose bone density, you know.
We're deteriorating, Maynard.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Father Time wants to fuck us over and grind us into dust.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
And, you know, this is me making excuses, but, you know, there's a lot going on with the winery.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
maynard james keenan
So even just going to do jujitsu during harvest is, like, nearly impossible because you're doing 10-hour days, and so I just don't have the time.
And you're in the sun, so by the time your day is done, you're like, I need a beer and I need to go to sleep.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Do you take electrolytes?
What do you take?
maynard james keenan
I don't know.
Henry Aikens turned me on to this little packet of stuff that's pretty good.
joe rogan
Do you know the company that makes it?
maynard james keenan
No.
joe rogan
There's a bunch of good ones.
maynard james keenan
That's like when we have a couple extra interns that are starting with us in the cellar, because it's Arizona.
It might be 90 degrees, but it's 110 on the concrete.
Just all that radiant heat off the concrete.
So I make everybody have an electrolyte drink just before we even start.
Here, drink this.
Now we're going to take every 15 minutes, stop, drink water, just because it's not easy working in the sun like that.
joe rogan
I think you live a fascinating life.
I think the combination of the things that you do is so unique.
You know, the fact that you run this winery and you're very serious about it, you make this amazing wine, and yet also you're making this fucking killer music, and you're doing the two of them together.
maynard james keenan
I also make great pasta.
joe rogan
Yeah, you do make great pasta.
You make great pizza too, man.
That pizza place.
maynard james keenan
Steve makes the pizza, but yeah.
joe rogan
Well, your restaurant, your Osteria.
That's how you say it, right?
maynard james keenan
Osteria, yes.
joe rogan
That place is awesome.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, it's good.
joe rogan
Scottsdale.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
So I'm on here to talk about stuff.
joe rogan
What do you really want to talk about?
maynard james keenan
Because I'm doing stuff.
What are you doing?
Full disclosure, I'm here because I'm pimping stuff that I'm selling.
joe rogan
You're pimping?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I'm pimping.
joe rogan
What are you pimping?
maynard james keenan
Pimping my wares.
joe rogan
You look like a pimp.
maynard james keenan
Look at that jacket.
joe rogan
It's very pimply.
unidentified
Forget about it.
joe rogan
I love that jacket.
maynard james keenan
When the whole lockdown shit happened and we couldn't tour, it sucked because I just released the Tool album and then on the heels of that I released the poster for Existential Reckoning and we couldn't tour Existential Reckoning.
So what we did, we figured out, okay, screw it, everybody's doing these streaming events, pay-per-views.
joe rogan
Right.
maynard james keenan
So we did one for the release of the album.
And for Puccifer, it just made sense.
That was the thing that for what we do with our characters and some of our sense of humor...
And the nature of some of the kind of interesting, heady landscapes that we kind of paint with some of the songs.
It's a really interesting format for us, and everybody in the band went, this is a great, this is a good thing for us.
So we did another one.
We did Billy Dee and the Hall of Feathered Servants, which was all of the Money Shot album and all the luchador stuff that we shot at the Mayan Theater.
We released that one.
So we went ahead and did this still during lockdown before we actually got back on the road.
We did Conditions of My Parole, the whole album, called Parole Violator.
So it's a bunch of stuff that's got Billy Dee and Major Douche and a bunch of the characters, Hildy and everything, along with everything from Conditions of My Parole.
And we did a bunch of the V is for Vagina era songs, reworked them completely and shot that all in the Sunset Sound studio in Hollywood.
There's some bits in that one as well.
But those are two pay-per-views that are coming out this coming weekend, Halloween weekend.
joe rogan
And do you do these pay-per-views off your website?
maynard james keenan
Well, yeah, Pusser4TV.com is where they're going to live for now as a temporary thing.
Eventually, we'll release them on Blu-ray and through iTunes and all that stuff.
unidentified
There it is right here.
joe rogan
Double feature.
maynard james keenan
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Nice.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, so it's just such a fun, when I figured out what it was and how we can do it, and how we were like duck to water with it, which is, all of us are really good with just the concepts, putting it all together.
Matt Mitchell's an incredible, not only just a producer for the record and an engineer, but also his approach to figuring out how to put all these things together.
And our team, his girlfriend Elisa, You're living a fun life, dude.
Oh yeah.
joe rogan
I like what you're doing.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, so it's just...
I don't know, we just kind of went...
It resonates with us, this approach of doing this thing.
Like, the idea of doing a series, a poster for a series, that doesn't really...
I think full concert with all the cool stuff in it.
joe rogan
Are you bandied about doing a series?
Have you thought about it?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, but I think, you know, a friend with Mark Brooks, who used to be a part of Metalocalypse, and conversations I'd had with him, and various other people that have been involved in those things, they're like...
As soon as you go down that path with somebody like Adult Swim or Comedy Central or whatever things, they just own that thing now.
So imagine me getting in the wrong contract and now all these characters that I've developed, I can't even take these on the road now because some other douchebag owns them.
joe rogan
Oh, you can't do that.
No, no, no.
maynard james keenan
We're not doing that.
joe rogan
No, no, no, no.
What about doing it independently?
What about doing a series, you know, doing it yourself?
maynard james keenan
Well, I think my attention span, I think being the full hour and change thing, that makes sense.
Doing the small episodes and having to build in all those stories for an entire season and have somebody expect following through with the next season.
I don't think I could do that.
joe rogan
You have to kind of manage, you have so many interests, you kind of have to manage your time wisely, don't you?
Because the vineyard, the winery requires so much focus and so much attention, as does the creation of the music.
maynard james keenan
And I couldn't do, with the winery, the success of the winery, I couldn't do it without people like my wife and Tim White and Calvin and The various people that are involved, Aaron Weiss, in kind of handling their jobs, the delegation of what you guys do.
I have to be there to make the decisions when it comes to the winemaking.
I'm on the forklift.
I'm the one, you know, there.
Deciding what's going to go in what tank, because everything ends up making, changes the outcome of what's happening.
And that's just the approaches of when we're picking the grapes, what grapes are we planting?
All those things come back to me, but the follow-through, if I didn't have...
Jen and Tim and Calvin and Aaron and all my vineyard managers, Chris and Jesse, if I didn't have those people in place, I couldn't do it at all, at all.
So it's not just a matter of me organizing my time.
It's also about me delegating to people that I can trust to make the decision beyond the initial framework that I've set in place.
joe rogan
Now, when you make wine and you grow these grapes, the grapes vary seasonally.
Does the flavor vary depending upon the weather conditions and what you do and don't do to the soil?
Does that mature or change over time?
maynard james keenan
Generally speaking, you're trying to pick a location that the soil itself is going to express something in this way forever.
That's going to be what that site does.
joe rogan
What's the variables when it comes to the soil?
maynard james keenan
Well, this is a word called terroir.
joe rogan
Terroir?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, and it's everything.
Every completely untrackable thing that you could think of in terms of the levels of moisture, when that moisture hits that soil, how deep does that moisture go in, the content, the geology of the soil, the weather patterns in that area and how they shift year to year.
What actual clone did you plant in that spot and how that clone is going to react differently to all of those infinite variables of just the soil, never mind the infinite variables of the weather.
And then when you choose to pick how you choose to prune, how many clusters you decide to set on that particular vine, how you decide to train that vine, is it going to be a unilateral, is it going to be bilateral, is it going to be just a Bush pruned, all these different variables about how you're going to do that farming, that affects the outcome.
In general though, if there's a particular region that does well with a particular grape, like Oregon with Pinot Noir, there might be various ways that they're pruning and adjusting how they're training and growing that fruit.
But generally speaking, it's going to be Pinot from Oregon.
It's going to have a particular profile across that state.
Variations from region to region, from site to site, from producer to producer.
But in general, it should have a signature that suggests Oregon Pinot.
Allegedly.
joe rogan
Allegedly.
Do you follow like other types of, do you follow like cigar growing or coffee growing or all these other different things that vary so much on the soil and things along those lines?
maynard james keenan
Coffee a little bit.
We just picked up a, well it's not here yet.
joe rogan
Do you want some?
maynard james keenan
No, I'm good.
I'm good.
joe rogan
This is good stuff.
maynard james keenan
I've had two today, so I'm going to yammer a little bit.
joe rogan
I like yammering.
maynard james keenan
Hey, yammer.
joe rogan
That's what we do.
maynard james keenan
I just picked up, it's not here yet, we picked up a nice modern roaster.
Because once I move the Osteria that's in Cottonwood up to the new Hill Project, that building in Cottonwood will become a coffee roaster and breakfast brunch place.
So we're actually pursuing relationships with beans and importers of coffee beans.
joe rogan
So when you do that, like, I'm good friends with Evan Hafer from Black Rival Coffee, and he'll travel all over the world and try out different beans and try out different things, and that's what this stuff is right here.
I've gotten really into it.
maynard james keenan
Oh, this is Black Rival?
Well, then I gotta...
Sorry, brother.
I didn't know it was yours, brother.
I'm sorry.
joe rogan
Yeah, no, he's...
Cheers, sir.
unidentified
Cheers.
joe rogan
Always good to see you.
Yeah, Evan makes some fucking phenomenal stuff.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
So, you know, so I have my, you know, Todd Fox is basically my go-to guy.
He actually has that eye of the tiger on those kind of things, and he'll point out things, because I'm just, dude, I'm living and I'm going, and he'll go, Check out the difference between these Colombian beans and these Brazilian beans.
And I go, okay.
He'll be the one that kind of slows me down to focus on, check it out.
You're like, you know what?
Then he'll put stuff, you know, randomly we'll have some stuff.
He goes, what do you think of that one?
And I go, I really like that.
He goes, those are the Brazilian beans.
So he's starting to help me kind of identify what it is that I like in a coffee, in an approach, because I don't Like a band, I don't have to sound like Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin.
I just have to sound like me and express the way I'm going to express.
So I don't need to be able to make every kind of coffee from every part of the world.
I just need to figure out the ones that I like because I'm kind of, in a way, I'm making it for me, but I'm also selling it.
But I'm not selling it to everybody.
I'm selling it to the people that are going to like it and they're going to come to my place because that's unique.
joe rogan
I had a guy on the podcast years back, Peter Giuliano, is that his name?
He's like a legitimate coffee nerd.
And he, we went down like a three-hour rabbit hole of coffee where he explained to me all the beans initially came from Ethiopia and how their flavors changed as they moved them to South America and grew them in Colombia.
maynard james keenan
That's an expression of terroir.
It's just, it changes clone to weather, to soil, to grower, to roaster.
unidentified
I mean, There's so many rabbit holes you can go down with that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
Like, you know, your average large commercial facility is that have a consistent coffee that's not great.
It's usually over-roasted or they overheat it when they do the coffee because they're just trying to cover up flaws.
joe rogan
Right.
Well, it's just like when people talk about coffee and they talk about...
Commercial places most of the people are buying stuff.
That's just they're not really buying coffee.
They're buying sugar water, right?
That's got caffeine in it.
maynard james keenan
I was at I went to do a an article and a training session out at gun site and in Outside of pre and paulden Arizona.
It's an old-school training facility and And I went there, you know, early morning, we were going to do this whole gun range thing, and this guy named Charlie, sitting at the table, he goes, you want some coffee?
I'm like, sure.
He goes, cream and sugar?
I normally don't, but like, it sounded like that's what he, yeah, yeah, sure.
He goes, I asked if you wanted coffee, not pudding.
joe rogan
Who's testing you?
maynard james keenan
Fucking clotheslined me.
First, out of the box.
Fuck you.
But I fell for it.
joe rogan
Yeah, I only go black now.
It's been like a couple of years now.
I only drink black coffee.
maynard james keenan
I do a little bit of cream, and I've been pretty consistent with that lately because now I'm focusing on what beans I like.
And for me, I know it's going to change once I remove the cream, but that's the lens that I see the coffee through is I have to have the cream in there because that's how I'm going to drink it.
So I'm trying to figure out what ones I like and with that lens.
I know that if I remove that lens, it's probably going to change my perception of what coffees I like.
joe rogan
It's funny, the cream debate, whether or not you should put cream in coffee.
It's an interesting thing because...
maynard james keenan
I think there's far bigger issues in the world to discuss.
unidentified
There definitely are.
joe rogan
There definitely are, but it's just such a funny snot thing.
maynard james keenan
Leave my cream alone, man.
joe rogan
Listen, I like it.
I like cream in a Kona.
A Kona coffee?
Yeah.
I like a little cream in there, but generally I just drink it black now.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I'm planning trips to Hawaii because I want to establish some relationships with some Maui growers so that I can actually make that be part of what I'm doing in Arizona, but also because I get to go train with Luis.
joe rogan
Oh, okay, yeah.
maynard james keenan
Maui Jiu Jitsu.
joe rogan
Luis was my first instructor ever.
He taught me my first private lesson.
maynard james keenan
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah.
He had Hickson's.
maynard james keenan
Okay.
On Pico.
joe rogan
Yeah, in 1996. Yep.
maynard james keenan
I must have just missed you.
joe rogan
Yeah, well I only went there a couple times and then I found Carlson Gracie's and I was so dumb I didn't know.
I'm like, oh this is a different place but it's the same name.
It must be the same thing.
And I caught Carlson Gracie's right when Vitor, when they were still calling him Victor.
maynard james keenan
Right.
joe rogan
And he had just competed against John Hess in Hawaii.
That was his debut when he was like 19 years old.
And then he was about to make his UFC debut.
maynard james keenan
I remember sitting behind Vitor, one row behind him, when Silva broke his leg.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
maynard james keenan
But here's Vitor's head, and I'm having to figure out how to see around this fucking brick.
His head is huge.
joe rogan
When he got up to 240 pounds when he fought Randy Couture, it was preposterous.
He was an enormous man.
maynard james keenan
Yes.
joe rogan
But those days, like those early days of the UFC were so interesting because, like, there's nothing like MMA in that regard or jiu-jitsu where you can go back just 25 years and you go and look at the difference between the art form then and what it is now.
It's just evolved in leaps and bounds.
maynard james keenan
It's evolved, but there's also...
Yeah, we could go on for hours about it, but when I first started at Pico, you could tell that there was a club within the club, and I was never going to have access to that information.
joe rogan
Oh, back then it was, yeah.
Back then it was really weird.
maynard james keenan
And you're not allowed to go to somebody else's gym.
So I'm traveling and I'm like, I couldn't train with anybody.
I had to wait till I got back to L.A. to pick it up.
Unless I brought somebody with me on the road to train some techniques, I had no idea what the hell we were doing, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, I was very fortunate that Jean-Jacques did not have that attitude.
Jean-Jacques was just, go train, my friend.
Train.
Train everywhere you can.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
And he was such a great guy and he had such a loyal student base that he had zero concerns about people leaving him.
You know, his concern was just that you trained.
maynard james keenan
Right.
joe rogan
Which is very fortunate.
maynard james keenan
I didn't have that because it was just such a weird at that moment.
joe rogan
What was a famine mentality in the early days?
Well, there was also lawsuits going on because the Gracies were suing other people for using the Gracie name.
Like, Orion, didn't he sue Carlson?
I'm sure.
He sued someone for using the term Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, even though Carlson's last name was Gracie.
I don't know if it was Carlson.
I don't want to...
Misrepresented.
But I know that there was some lawsuits involved because Gracie Jiu Jitsu itself became like a different thing.
They were calling that a different thing than just straight Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
Right.
maynard james keenan
And now I think it's the opposite.
I'm not sure where it is now, but whatever.
I give up.
joe rogan
Well, I mean, that's where it becomes fascinating where a guy like John Donaher kind of like leaps to the top of this thing with just this analytical perspective that's completely free of dogma.
All he cares about is what is the correct way to do things.
What's the most effective in tried and true competition format.
Like, this is what we've learned without any bullshit.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
And, you know, that's been great for me to be on the road training with somebody like John, like my friends at Easton and Denver and, you know, Dave and Dan Camarillo.
They all have a slightly different approach to the things.
Some of the guys are going to be a little more self-defense oriented, so they're going to be looking to check your position and make sure you can't get hit in the face.
Right.
But I'm a grown-ass man, and so you go, okay, I am playing jiu-jitsu.
I'm not worried about getting it in the face.
I'm going to train this position to understand how to move my body.
Because that's what it is about.
At the end of the day, it is about me taking you offline and advancing.
But really it's about you and your self-discovery and your ability for self-control.
Me being able to control my body to do a thing.
And if you don't have that self-awareness of understanding that this isn't just you flopping around like a fish accidentally kneeing some dude in the face while you're going for a move, you're not really progressing if you don't understand that it is about your self-control.
So Okay, yeah, that's a self-defense approach to the jiu-jitsu, but I'm also conscious enough to know, okay, I'm going to do this.
I'm going to play around with X card and see what happens because I've never done it, and I want to see what that is.
joe rogan
How much does training in jiu-jitsu help just your mind, the way you approach life and the way you think about things?
maynard james keenan
Well, like I've mentioned before on your show, this is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.
This does not come easy for me.
I am the perfect example of...
A klutzy dude who this is not natural for me to do.
And because of that, because of that, forever it was stressful.
And so you're activating your mind in a stressful situation and you're still getting oxygen in your blood and you're moving and you're opening up things.
But at some point it became more like chess.
Instead of this, oh my God, this guy's going to tap me.
Well, of course he's going to tap you.
If you just get that in your head like, I might lose today.
I'm probably going to lose today.
Be comfortable in that moment of understanding how to be conscious and aware in that moment so that you can recognize the moment before you get to the moment now for next time.
joe rogan
Mm-hmm.
maynard james keenan
That was a weird shift for me, getting to a position of, like, I'm in a compromised position, but I'm going to get to a safe position within the compromised position, take a deep breath, and pay attention to what he does next, so that next time I can be ahead of what he does next.
Weird mental thing.
joe rogan
And then training enough that you could store all this data and have it accessible when these scenarios present themselves again.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, because again, it's about body control and understanding what your body is going to do naturally now.
The drilling, the drilling, the drilling.
I cannot stress enough the drilling in a safe environment with somebody who's not trying to tear your head off.
With a good training partner who's going to give you the resistance you need.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
maynard james keenan
To be able to rep, you know, the repetition and then replicate that movement.
Yeah, we're talking about jujitsu, but we're not.
We're talking about making pasta.
We're talking about making wine.
These are things that apply to every area of your life.
If you can find one that's more difficult for you than the other ones, you'll improve the things that come naturally to you by focusing on the thing that doesn't come naturally to you.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's the great quote from Miyamoto Musashi.
Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree with that.
joe rogan
Yeah.
That's the beauty of martial arts.
And that's the thing that's missed by people that don't practice it, that think of it as like some sort of brutal endeavor for, you know, macho brutes, assholes.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I mean, but, you know, we know those guys.
joe rogan
They exist.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, they exist.
joe rogan
But they need to exercise, too.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
Yeah, they do.
But, you know, I think...
Finding that thing that's actually challenging you physically, mentally, spiritually helps with other things that come along.
The world's weird right now.
I don't know.
I feel like we're helping train people to understand that the world goes through a lot of changes.
There's going to be a lot of stress.
Nobody's going to And 90% of the people of the world are not going to agree with you.
And if you can get through that mentally and emotionally and spiritually to know that there's something on the other side.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
I think things like jujitsu, things like growing food...
Resigning yourself to nature and having to navigate farming those kind of things they start to reset you in a way where like it's not this not everything has to be an argument mm-hmm sometimes it's you just having to navigate the fucking weather yeah if you can get to that mindset you get a lot more done honestly and you'll survive shit that some people won't because they're so focused on the petty dumb shit that they're gonna miss the bigger picture I think a lot of the petty stuff is people also want you to agree with
joe rogan
them.
That's not really necessary.
You know, so many people, they have an opinion and they feel like if they can't convince you that they're correct or they can't force their opinion on you, that somehow or another it invalidates their own perspective.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
I find that, you know, going back, again, we can go right back to jujitsu.
We know guys that are like, no, this is the only way to do this move.
joe rogan
Right, right, right.
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
Well, I just watched this guy beat the shit out of everyone at ADCC, and he's not doing the things that you're telling me that you're supposed to only do.
Mm-hmm.
You know?
And then, like, this is the only way that, well, using Hickson as an example.
Hickson says, only do this, this, this, and this.
You never do these other things.
It's like, Have you not watched his ValiTudo videos?
He did everything the opposite of what you just said.
He had his nose before his toes.
He had all these things that you're not supposed to do.
Those things are not necessarily 100%.
You have to be open-minded.
You have to disagree with it being one way.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I mean, it really is an art.
maynard james keenan
And then be open to hearing the way that you didn't think it was.
joe rogan
And then there's all these variables, like the size of your frame, the way your body moves, whether or not you're flexible.
There's so many variables that will present themselves in this sort of equation of how do you express yourself on the mat.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
maynard james keenan
Now, the one thing that...
I was talking to Donald, the guy you just met today.
You know, you were trying to convince a couple of friends to take a class.
You know, they're not very athletic, but they're, you know, musician friends.
Like, yeah, just come in and take the white belt class.
You're in a safe environment.
And getting them to understand, like, when you walk in the room and you see a dude shaped like you, that might not be the biggest sniper in the room.
It might be that geeky kid in the corner who looks like he probably works in a library.
joe rogan
Yeah, oftentimes it is.
maynard james keenan
And he's the one who's gonna fuck you up.
He looks like he's, like, you know, the nerd in the corner with the glasses and the goofy hair.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
He's the guy who's gonna fuck you up.
joe rogan
The nerd assassins.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, because they're analytical.
You know, when jiu-jitsu favors the analytical approach, you analyze positions and analyze possible counters and traps you can set.
That's why I love guys like Mikey Musumechi.
You know who he is?
He is a fascinating fellow.
I had him on the podcast.
He's like the smiliest assassin, thick glasses, only eats pizza and pasta.
And he only eats once a day.
Trains, no bullshit, 12 hours a day.
Just constantly drilling and going over positions.
Big-ass smile on his face.
He's multiple-time world champion.
maynard james keenan
Okay.
joe rogan
And he's just fucking assassinating people.
maynard james keenan
We have a new guy at our gym, Brown Belt, out of Easton.
And he's kind of a geeky dude, tall, with glasses.
His name's Clay Wimmer.
joe rogan
He's from a mall's gym in Colorado?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, he's out of Centennial.
I think he got his brown belt from Velour.
And when he's rolling, he's got this creepy grin on his face like, you're creeping me out, dude.
Stop grinning.
And he's like, he's one of those backpack fuckers.
He gets red on your back and you're like, you're screwed.
And he got there.
You don't know how he got there, but he got there.
And he's grinning the whole time, like sometimes chewing gum.
You're like, you're chewing gum and you're grinning.
You're creeping me out, man.
joe rogan
That's Mikey.
Pull up Mikey Musumechi takes Iminari's back.
There's a video of him.
Watch this.
He already took the back.
Watch how he takes it back.
Go back a little bit of ways, and you see the position.
So they're in a scramble, and Iminari, who's like the master leg locker, watch how Mikey takes his back.
This is so fucking beautiful.
He takes him out.
This is Mikey on top here.
And this is, again, this is against Iminari.
Look at this back take.
Look at that.
maynard james keenan
He got that neck grab.
joe rogan
Do you see how sweet that was?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Look how sweet.
Back up a little bit.
Look how sweet that was.
So he's in the...
Look at that, man.
Fucking so slick.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
And again, that's him doing it to Iminari, who's just a fucking legend.
And he traps the arm.
I mean, just incredible stuff.
Super, super high level.
That's Mikey.
And I think he's 24. You got it.
Look at him.
That's Mikey.
I love that guy.
He's amazing.
And it's to me that he's my favorite example when I show people.
unidentified
$15,000 bonus for that incredible performance.
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
Wow.
joe rogan
He's just such a sweet guy, too.
And so talented.
That's what I love about Jiu-Jitsu.
That's a world champion.
maynard james keenan
Right.
joe rogan
It's an art form.
He might as well be playing the violin.
He might as well be making paintings or something.
That's what he's doing.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, it's a beautiful—like I said, it's one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life.
joe rogan
It's fucking hard as shit.
There's a bond that you have.
I hung out with Guy Ritchie this past weekend in London, and we had the same sort of conversation.
He did my podcast a few years back, and he said, I wanted to do your podcast because I knew you were a jiu-jitsu guy.
He's like, I knew we would have, like, very common perspectives on things.
Like, there's a thing.
If you've done it, and you've gotten to, like, he's a black belt under Henzo.
Guy's, he's really legit.
You know, and you would never know.
Like, he's a super unassuming guy, but then you start talking to him about details and stuff.
Like, oh, you're fucking legit.
He's for real.
maynard james keenan
I love those guys.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
You know, the guys that...
Doesn't really happen anymore, but the kind of guy that you wish you were at the end of the bar in some scenario where two dudes or one guy is just fucking with the nerd at the bar.
Before cameras.
Before these.
So he could actually get away with it.
In a bar.
And I just go, oh, this is going to be great.
joe rogan
Did you see the video of Henzo Gracie taking some guy down on the subway?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Some asshole just get really shitty.
And he's just like, my friend, you've made a big mistake!
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, don't do that anymore.
joe rogan
It's a way of life, though.
It really is.
It's a way of making this thing so difficult that the rest of life seems maybe not less complicated, but more understandable.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
maynard james keenan
Okay.
joe rogan
You know what I'm saying?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Through that struggle of that thing, you can kind of apply those lessons to other stuff.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree.
I think it's...
I've, over the years, I've applied it to, of course, writing and putting music together.
That's definitely that struggle of, like, you hit a wall...
You have to navigate, you know, through, around, or over.
joe rogan
When you write, do you write on your own?
Do you write with other people?
Like, how do you create music?
Do you create music alone?
maynard james keenan
It's like, for me, it's, okay, I'm gonna train jujitsu.
Okay, we're gonna bring it back to that, because that's our base here.
If I'm going to train with somebody, every body type is going to be a different thing.
And I can't just...
You know how it is.
If you're just going to force your will on some other dude, then it's just two idiots trying to force their will on each other and you're going to gas out.
You have to see what this thing is and this person, how they're approaching you.
Are they approaching you standing?
Are they butt scooting?
Are they going to...
Whatever they're gonna do, each song and every riff or whatever is a reaction to what I'm seeing or hearing, right?
So I'm not just gonna come in with a lyric and come up with a line on top of some kind of rhythm or melody.
I have to pay attention to what's in front of me and work around that thing and listen to it and pay attention to it and drill.
joe rogan
So how does this process start?
Like, say you have a blank slate.
maynard james keenan
Blank slate.
So for me, there's not really a blank slate.
It's me going to, maybe it's me going to Matt and going, okay, just in general, I'd like to see what we can do with, there's some sounds that I heard on this, you know, Maybe it was a movie soundtrack.
Maybe it was a record.
You know, maybe I'm picking out, like, mandolin or, you know, some kind of a particular pedal from a guitar or a film that has, like, a Rykoot or a riff going through it or something, a vibe.
And maybe Matt has picked up, in the case of Existential Reckoning, he picked up a bunch of amazing old synths, like Fairlight and Sinclair and all this kind of cool shit that's, in a way, it's...
joe rogan
What are you saying?
Synths?
maynard james keenan
Synthesizers.
joe rogan
Synthesizers.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, so old school, like, you know, Kraftwerk, you know, Yes, old, like, you know, Michael Jackson's, like...
Like, that familiar sound that's from a very specific...
And you can manipulate those sounds to a point, but you're kind of boxed in on what those things can do in some cases.
Like the Fairlight, it's going to give you a very specific sound.
Now there's the framework, and he'll come up with a melody or a thing, and he'll throw it to me, and I'll just drill, drill, drill that thing into my head, driving around with it in my car, truck.
You know, putting headphones on on the plane and just listen in the cellar.
I'll put it on while I'm working on stuff just to just to put that thing on loop and drill it into my head of what it is so that I can figure out how to go through around or over this thing, work with it, work against it intentionally.
So it's it's a it's a mathematical three dimensional geometric puzzle.
joe rogan
So when you're listening to it and you're just like going over in your head, you're just like allowing it to talk to you?
maynard james keenan
Correct.
Correct.
You know, just like we were going over today with Danaher.
Like, okay, we're in this position, but did the guy retract his elbow or did he leave his elbow forward?
Is the riff giving me an elbow?
Or is the riff cutting me off on a particular rhythm or a melody?
Because, you know, you might have a melody in mind, but you get closer to the end of that riff and it might have changed directions, then your note is sour.
So you have to pay attention to what note goes with that thing, and rhythmically as well as sonically, like, you know, melodically.
So it's you getting used to this thing, and he might be able to move it.
I might go, hey man, can we adjust a few things in here and move forward?
So it is definitely a step-by-step piece.
I will respond.
Then he will give me back a thing that he's developed further.
And I'll respond to his response.
And then at some point, I'll go to Karina and go, hey, I'd like to hear, before I go too far, I want to hear what you would do over what I've done, over what he's done.
And now it's a triad of us navigating that sonic landscape.
joe rogan
So it must be an interesting dance in that you have to do it with people that have sort of the same engagement that you do, the same level of discipline, the same...
maynard james keenan
Same level of discipline, but strengths where I don't have strengths, I have strengths where they don't have strengths.
So you're kind of filling in each other's gaps with a common goal.
So yeah, we definitely have common things that we like, but we also bring different strengths to the table to make it work as a whole.
joe rogan
That's one of the more challenging things I would imagine about a band, is that you kind of have to get everybody on the same sort of...
maynard james keenan
You have to remain open.
Your listening skills should be as important and as honed as your regurgitating skills.
I'm successful and this is what I do.
Fuck you.
No.
Then it just starts sounding the same.
You're not really progressing as an artist to reinvent yourself and see things from a different perspective.
My opinion.
joe rogan
Do you see this process more clearly now than you did years ago?
Is this something that you get better at?
maynard james keenan
Oh yeah, like anything.
I think you just get better at listening the more you listen.
It's like anything.
An action, reaction, and then is there some kind of reinforcement of that behavior?
Right?
I found that when I started listening more and reacting more as a listener, the reinforcement of that behavior was that there was a better thing that came out the other end rather than just sounding like something I'd already done before, jammed over something that somebody else has already done before.
So you reinvent.
And then the behavior is reinforced because the thing, not from somebody externally, but from the thing that you're hearing, you go, I've never heard me do that before.
Great.
Keep honing that knife.
unidentified
How long can you do that for?
maynard james keenan
Ever?
joe rogan
Forever.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, just listen forever.
Because you're going to be hearing it at a different age.
You're going to be hearing it differently than you would 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
joe rogan
Right.
maynard james keenan
Because you have different life experiences.
joe rogan
As long as it's engaging and as long as it's fascinating, you keep doing it.
unidentified
Right.
maynard james keenan
I will definitely, you know, probably already, you know, I have my head up my own ass, but, you know, I won't be relevant to the TikTokers of the world because it's just not on their radar.
It's not those people that listen to the things they listen to and the people that respond to the things they respond to now.
I'm not necessarily relevant.
But there's an entire generation of people that's not just my generation.
There's people older than me and much younger than me that have grown with this thing.
And so as they're aging, they're discovering it.
joe rogan
Right.
maynard james keenan
Right?
joe rogan
Do you think about that, though?
Do you think about whether or not you're relevant or whether or not...
maynard james keenan
You can't.
Because you'll start being desperate and getting plastic surgery and looking like a fucking alien and trying to insert yourself into some stupid fucking thing.
I'm not talking about anybody.
joe rogan
Yeah.
No, you can't.
maynard james keenan
I'm not talking about my peers.
Fuck, man.
joe rogan
If you're alive, you have to assume other people are going to...
If you're on a vibe, there's other people that are going to be on that vibe.
There's so many people.
Yeah.
The quest for relevancy is like, oh boy.
maynard james keenan
It turns to desperation very quickly.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
It reeks.
So just maintain your art, dude.
And then, I don't know, we're having fun creating.
joe rogan
Well, you guys are also so diverse.
Like, your sounds are so diverse.
And I think that's one of the strengths of you, is that with Tool and Pussifer and, like, you know, Perfect Circle, you've done so much different stuff.
It's like...
maynard james keenan
That's the listening part.
What does Billy do?
What do Adam, Justin, and Danny do?
What does Matt and Karina do?
I'm listening to what they're doing.
And having that conversation with them and building on those relationships.
They're different conversations.
They're different people with different life experiences.
The art and the sounds that come out of those people is going to be 100% different.
Even if I'm the common thing, if nobody knew that I was in Puccifer...
And you were just listening to it, you might pick up that it kind of sounds like the guy from Perfect Circle, but probably not.
It would be a whole different experience if you didn't know that I was involved.
joe rogan
Yeah, for sure.
That's why I think these kind of conversations are so interesting to other artists.
Because they get to see this sort of like, you know, you've been around long enough that you have a foundation.
You know, you're solid in your approach.
And there's a lot of people out there that are like, am I doing it right?
I mean, what am I doing?
I don't know.
Is this the right way to do it?
Should I change it?
What should I do?
maynard james keenan
I have that.
I'm fairly confident in some things, but I try to change it up as much as I can.
I guess I'm going to start roasting coffee soon, so maybe that's one of those resets of I don't know what I'm doing.
Let's relearn this thing that I don't have any idea and it might suck.
joe rogan
Those are valuable, right?
Those new things?
maynard james keenan
I think, I think so.
I think just that, you know, it could be written off to like midlife crisis, but I think it's also just understanding that chaos and change is part of life.
And if you can kind of get yourself to recognize that things aren't, you're not going to just get to a spot and it's going to be that for the rest of your life.
It's always going to be something changing.
joe rogan
I think it also speaks to the complex aspect of thinking itself because like You know, what are our thoughts and creativity and how do you keep them inspired and engaged?
And I think one of the ways to do it is to become a beginner again.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
To just try some...
maynard james keenan
I started getting back into jujitsu.
It took me forever to get back in because I was living in a remote area.
But then when I got into it, I was progressing.
And then I felt like, okay, I need to, you know...
I need to ruin my day.
unidentified
So I took up Muay Thai, which is like...
maynard james keenan
Way.
Like, I'm not great at jujitsu.
Holy shit, I really suck at Muay Thai.
joe rogan
Well, you also did it after a hip replacement, which is pretty wild.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, well.
I'm not smart.
joe rogan
But you are, because it's like, why not?
Fucking, they fixed it.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, but that works that kind of a reset where you're you're jolting your brain into Understanding a whole different thing.
You don't you're not familiar with the reset is huge.
I think yeah and you know now But you know, I'm I'm a fairly successful musician I have a backup plan.
I have these things.
I think on some level I can do that.
Not a lot of people can think in terms of their entire career or a reset of their entire career because there might not be something for you.
You might not be able to do that.
I can kind of get away with that for now.
joe rogan
Well, it's also harder if you're boxed into it, like if you're a pop star, you know, you're boxed into it.
You know, you have like a very specific genre that you're successful in.
Very hard for those people to branch out.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
You know, because I'm sure you've met people that are fucking huge in their genres, that are just pop star huge.
And I don't know.
I haven't met a lot of those people.
I have no idea if there's a core person to have a conversation with.
I have no idea.
joe rogan
There is with some of them.
maynard james keenan
I don't travel in those circles.
joe rogan
Like with Miley Cyrus, there is.
She's fascinating.
She's a unique little artist.
maynard james keenan
I've met her.
joe rogan
She's wild.
She's very interesting.
She's a real artist, but she's also a pop star.
maynard james keenan
I make fun of her in our new show.
Not bad.
I think she would find the joke very funny.
joe rogan
I'm sure she would.
She's got a good sense of humor.
She's fun.
But, you know, she's a pop star, but she's also, like, she experiments with shit.
She's trying to find whatever it is that's engaging to her.
maynard james keenan
Right.
Yeah, and I have friends that are mutual friends with her, and I think that's what I'm hearing.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
She's digging.
joe rogan
I became interested in her when she did, she covered Jolene.
You know, I heard that song.
I'm like, Jesus.
Like, there's a soul to that girl's voice that belies her age and, you know, and what you would expect from her.
maynard james keenan
Right.
joe rogan
You know, to cover that Dolly Parton song and do it in a very unique way with a beautiful fucking sound to it.
maynard james keenan
Right.
joe rogan
You know?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
But again, trapped in that machine.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, for sure.
And that was...
You know, she literally had to start swearing every other word to break out of at least part of that.
You're so trapped into Hannah Montana...
Right.
In order to get out of that, you had to start, you know, almost like go full Mike Patton and start smearing shit on everything.
Just to fucking erase it, you know, to start over.
joe rogan
Well, that just happens to a lot of those people.
They just get stuck in this thing that's like uber successful.
maynard james keenan
But, you know, it seems like she's figured out a way to wiggle.
joe rogan
She has.
maynard james keenan
And broaden out of it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
Wiggle out of it.
joe rogan
But, man, what a fucking...
What a salmon trip up the fucking waterfall that is.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, because there's so many people with their hands out, so many people that have a piece of that, so many people that don't want you to branch out because, you know, anything you do that's not that they think could ruin the gravy train that they're enjoying, right?
So we can see how that might be.
And...
The egos involved, like of the popularity and the attention and the money, the people that you get to hang out with.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
I'm just not, I'm not in that circle.
So I don't know, I don't know, I'm not wired for it.
I'm not, I'm not, that's not part of my world.
I'm not judging it at all, but that's not part of my world.
I don't know how I would react.
unidentified
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
If all of a sudden, you know, if I can name five huge pop celebrities of actors and musicians, if they go, hey, we want to come to your show, like, what did I do?
What is what I'm doing of any interest to you?
I don't know what that would look like.
Or what are you seeing?
It's somebody what?
I would be very suspicious of those people coming and actually reacting to what we're doing.
joe rogan
But is that because you box them yourself?
Like you decide that like what they've created is all they are?
maynard james keenan
No.
No, I just would be wondering what...
Yeah, maybe.
I guess maybe I'm being judgmental.
joe rogan
It's easy to do, right?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, but...
joe rogan
Especially, it's fun to do.
maynard james keenan
But, like, because I know that I'm busy, and those people are busy.
So why would they stop what they're doing to come and do...
To pay attention to this thing?
They already have all this shit going on.
Like, why would they come to the thing?
And I'm talking about numbers.
Not just one person.
Like...
Five or six people at once decided to come, you know, like, you know, Gwyneth Paltrow and fucking Brad Pitt and somebody, somebody, somebody wants to come to your show.
I'd be like, were they promised something?
Is there something I don't know?
Like, why would you come here?
joe rogan
Right.
maynard james keenan
What interest would you have in this thing?
How is this even on your radar?
You know, I would be very suspicious of that.
joe rogan
That's funny that you'd be suspicious.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Do you watch Black Mirror?
maynard james keenan
I started to back when it first came out and some of those episodes are pretty fucking amazing.
joe rogan
Amazing.
Well there's a really wild one with Miley Cyrus and in this one she has like this evil aunt who's like controlling her career and they download, spoiler alert, they download her mind.
Into this little doll, like this robot doll that you can buy.
And it's like your little Miley Cyrus friend, but it actually is her inside this thing.
maynard james keenan
So multiple versions of her.
joe rogan
Yeah, but it's like, I don't want to fuck this up, because people should watch it.
It's a fun episode.
But it's her trying to escape her pop lifestyle, but she's being controlled by all these people that have a vested interest in her making extraordinary amounts of money with that genre.
And then she gets out of it eventually.
maynard james keenan
Right.
joe rogan
But it's pretty wild.
But it's that thing.
It speaks to that struggle.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's like, you know, you assume that Justin Bieber's just that fucking guy that sings like a girl.
You know, like, he sounds, like, first heard Justin Bieber, like, what a beautiful voice that girl has.
And then, like, that's a guy.
I'm like, oh, what?
Oh, he's young.
Oh, okay.
And then, you know, he matures over time, and he becomes this different thing.
It's like, but it's still a human.
You know?
Like, if you wanted to go see a Pussifer show, I could imagine you'd be like...
unidentified
What?
maynard james keenan
He would be welcome.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
Sure.
maynard james keenan
I would never say those people can't come to my...
I would be happy to entertain.
I'm an asshole, but not that kind of an asshole.
joe rogan
You're not a snob.
maynard james keenan
I'm not a snob, no.
You're 100% welcome to come to those things.
But, yeah, I wouldn't exclude anybody from that art.
It's art.
Something might resonate with them that would end up showing up in something that they did next, right?
Artists all feed off each other in some way.
I'm inspired by a bunch of different films, TV shows, bands, visual artists.
Those things inspire me and they get me thinking on the next thing that I'm going to do and how do I build on that and make it make sense.
joe rogan
Well, music is inspirational in such a weird way, too.
It's like a drug, you know?
Like Prison Sex, that song, there's something about that song that makes me want to lift.
Like when I'm lifting weights, that song is just like the guitar riff.
It just like gives you extra juice.
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
You know, there's something about music that it provides, like it opens up a specific pathway in you.
It's like a drug.
It really is.
It's an amazing drug of inspiration.
maynard james keenan
And it can be a neural map in a way that opens up whatever that is you're getting.
There's a rhythm and a tone to that thing that's inspiring those myelin connections in you to do a thing.
I could see that.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And also it speaks to, especially like older music is like a time map.
It's like a map of the culture when that song was created, who this person is, how they fit into the culture, whether or not they're around anymore.
Like whenever I listen to Hendrix in particular, it's like a Hendrix, to me, is like a map of the 60s in a lot of ways.
It's like the rebellion from the Vietnam era.
maynard james keenan
It's a wine.
It's something that happened on that day, at that time, on that site, in that place, made that certain way.
That's a time capsule of that moment.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah, it really is.
And unique in that way, that you could kind of listen to it, and it transports you.
It takes you there.
Like, Janis Joplin does that for me, too.
It brings me to that time, you know, just like trying to imagine the context of When it was created, who she was.
maynard james keenan
So going back to your original question of how we write, you have to be true, to me, for the way that I write, is I'm trying to be true to who I am today.
Because those are waypoints, as you pointed out.
Those are waypoints along your particular history and your experiences.
So if I can be in the present moment when I'm writing those things about what's happening, how I'm feeling...
Even though some of the experiences are lifelong experiences, how I perceive those experiences today and how I can attach those to a bed of rhythms and sounds and melodies will end up hopefully being what you're talking about.
It's a waypoint for that moment in time that now you can go back and revisit.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's such a unique art form in that way.
It just encapsulates so many different things.
Lyrics and sounds and feelings and you can just turn it on any time you want.
I mean, what a weird time, too, because you just talk to your phone and tell your phone, hey, play me this.
unidentified
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
So strange.
joe rogan
It is wild.
The access to that art is so instantaneous now.
Just so bizarre.
maynard james keenan
But like anything, it's a hammer, right?
You can use that hammer to build something.
You can use that hammer to destroy something.
This is...
This is such an awful thing and such an amazing thing, depending on how you're dealing with it.
You can use it to gain more control, more money, or you can use it to share things with people and help them find a way.
joe rogan
And also, like, having a level of discipline is so important when engaging with that thing.
Because that thing can, you know, we were talking about TikTok earlier today, about how the parent company of TikTok is using TikTok to specifically monitor the locations of American individuals and how fucking crazy that is.
maynard james keenan
I deleted it.
joe rogan
Yeah, I never had it.
Right away, I was like, what?
And then when they were talking about banning it, I started looking into it.
I was like, that's a problem.
And then we read on one day during the podcast, we read the terms of service and what it's allowed to do, which nobody reads.
maynard james keenan
Agree.
Yeah, you agree.
joe rogan
Everybody agrees.
But it's so fucked up that when I read it, I couldn't believe that it was real.
I had to go over it from multiple different sites.
Am I being accurate with this?
Does it really have access to your computers that aren't connected to TikTok?
If you use the same email account, if you have the same computer and a network, yes.
Yes, it does.
It has access to everything you do.
Which is fucking bananas.
So I read that over and one of my kids came home and she said that her friend was mad because her mom listened to me talk about the terms of service and made him delete TikTok from his phone.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, it's...
New world.
It's a whole new world.
joe rogan
But on the other side, there's so much interesting stuff that you can get off of it.
I'm so much more educated about so many different subjects because of it, because of that access to data.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I just harvested some of the stuff from our produce from our garden.
I'm like, I have these random things.
I'm going to try to do something with these random things.
Just type in the random ingredients recipe.
Like all these things.
And there's 12 fucking recipes involving these things.
And now I can make this amazing salad with these things.
It's fucking delicious.
And my wife's going...
What the fuck is this?
So there's those benefits of like, how do I roast coffee again?
How do I make this particular sauce for a pasta?
It's all right there.
How do I fix this specific power washer that's broken?
How do I fix this power washer so I can get back to cleaning bins?
Oh, here's a whole...
Four video options of understanding how to fix that mechanical thing that you would have to take it to somebody ten years ago.
joe rogan
Yeah, we just don't have the user manual for how to use it correctly.
Right.
It's like everyone knows you can't drink whiskey all day long.
You'll die.
But you can have a drink or two and it can enhance conversation.
And it's a social lubricant.
You feel great.
But we know that.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Because we have a human history of use that dates back hundreds and hundreds of years of doing that.
maynard james keenan
There's no thing going, turn this fucking thing off.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I just got a notification from my phone the other day that said my screen time is down 77%.
maynard james keenan
Congratulations.
unidentified
Yes.
maynard james keenan
Congratulations.
joe rogan
I did it.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
But that's because of that, trying to make my own user manual.
maynard james keenan
I find that the reason I'm on it more than I would be is because three bands, three wineries, you know, all the businesses that I have going on, I end up being on it a lot more than I want to be just because I'm answering questions or inspiring plans or whatever.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
I just have to be responsive.
joe rogan
Yeah, for me it's a quest for interesting shit to stimulate my mind.
I mean, I'm always looking for, like, what's a new place for me to go to find things?
You know, and I sometimes feel boxed in.
I'm only going to like a specific six or seven different sites to try to get information.
Well, I need a new site.
I need a new thing.
How do I get that thing?
unidentified
Right, right.
joe rogan
Where is it?
How do I get access to a new perspective that I didn't consider before?
And not get overwhelmed by fucking pop-up ads and bullshit and nonsense.
unidentified
Right.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I do.
We're currently on the road.
This is a stop on the way.
We're playing Texas with the new version two of the Pussyford Tour.
And I find that when I'm in the break after soundcheck or before training jujitsu with whatever person I can find in that town, I end up, rather than going to those things that I should, like you're talking about, I'll just go back and I'll be watching in my dressing room just old episodes of stuff.
So it's almost like, for me, it's like I'm turning my brain off with my Apple TV. I'm just gonna zone out and have whatever light lunch I'm gonna have before the show, play with my dog and just let that kind of be almost background noise.
What's going on.
So I feel like there's an unconscious Zen thing happening with that eye candy and, you know, familiarity.
Like, how many times can I watch Talladega Nights?
Many more, to be honest.
I'm going to watch that many more times.
But, like, that kind of thing, just being there on the background as a familiar comfort, you know, blanket, you know, to have it on so that I'm not thinking too much.
So in a way, I'm putting that on, so I'm not on this.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
So you're learning.
maynard james keenan
I'm learning to just put a movie on that, like, it's going, and meanwhile I'm cleaning out a drawer in the road case of shit that I didn't need.
Like, everybody hands me t-shirts.
I'm trying to figure out, like, okay, do I really want to hang on to this t-shirt?
joe rogan
There's so many t-shirts.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, there's so many shirts.
So many shirts.
I intentionally didn't bring you anything today, because, like, I always, like, I feel like you're probably just every fucking time somebody comes in there, they're just giving you shit.
joe rogan
Yeah, but, you know, every now and then you get good shit.
maynard james keenan
That's true.
unidentified
That's true.
It's cool.
joe rogan
I have a lot of cool shit because of that.
maynard james keenan
Right.
joe rogan
Some of it's nonsense, but...
Right.
But it's, again, it's like the phone thing.
You've got to filter out what is nonsense.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
What are you doing in Texas?
maynard james keenan
Which shows?
We just played, Pussifer just played San Antonio and El Paso.
We play Houston tomorrow and Fort Worth the day after.
And I don't know where the fuck we go from there.
I think it's, I want to say Louisiana, Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
Eventually I think Halloween we're actually playing in Nashville, which I'm kind of excited about because I love Nashville.
joe rogan
Nashville's awesome.
It's getting a little weird.
It's getting a little Hollywood.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, but every place is going to get that way.
Of course.
Again, right back to this and right back to a podcast like this, I say, oh, I love Nashville, and that now people are going to, you know, there's going to be, even if it's five people that decide to go to Nashville because of hearing you say you like Nashville or me saying I like Nashville.
You know, when did somebody say something about Austin that made you move to Austin?
Because, you know, somebody said something and inspired you to move to Austin, which, when I used to be here, it was a much different town when I hung out here in 1985 at what's now Elysium is the club now on Red River.
It used to be, it might still be, it was like a gay bar.
And on one night a week, it would have a thing called Club Iguana.
And it was like a kind of a goth, punk rock night in that location.
And that area was, you know, it was like the sketchy 7th Street was all the, you know, kind of cool alternative gay bar, punk rock thing.
And the 6th Street was all the frat boy things.
I think it's still kind of that.
joe rogan
Sixth Street's pretty weird now.
It's got a lot of cool shit.
maynard james keenan
Is it?
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's like hip-hop clubs.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
Well, Elysium now is like, I think, I could be completely wrong, but it's more like, now it's goth most of the time.
unidentified
Oh, really?
maynard james keenan
But I don't know that.
I haven't been in years.
joe rogan
Oh, I started coming here in 99. And I just, I always liked the fact that it seemed different than any other city.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's got its own, is this it here?
unidentified
This is Austin in 1985. Nice.
joe rogan
They look like they're dancing to Wham.
Wake me up!
maynard james keenan
And where is this?
jamie vernon
I typed in that club you said, and this is a video that popped up.
maynard james keenan
Club Iguana?
unidentified
Yeah.
jamie vernon
I don't know that it's it specifically, but it's someone interviewing people on the street down there.
maynard james keenan
Okay.
How fucking amazing would it be if you see me in this video?
unidentified
I was hoping.
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
By day, I had my army cap on and my full BDUs.
And then as soon as we had the weekend hit and we had the time off, hat comes off, two-tone hair, mohawk, wear some Adamant-looking, Sgt. Pepper-looking jacket.
I forgot about Adamant.
And then wearing stretchy blouse for pants with a belt.
So it's actually a shirt.
You're wearing it almost like tights.
We had a fun time.
It was a good time.
If you saw photos of me, you'd be like, I'm posting this shit on the internet, dude.
Fucking don't you fucking dare post that on the internet.
But that was a good time.
It was fun because it was something I wasn't used to.
In Michigan, we didn't have a club like that.
And it was such a mixed, diverse group of people.
I just love that area.
And so I've always had a thing.
Since then, I've always had a thing for Austin.
But I've watched Austin change over the years.
But it seems like it has this great, I don't know if the word's libertarian or, you know, whatever.
But you've got a mix of everybody here, and they've managed to get along and not kill each other.
joe rogan
Well, it's a good combination of a blue city and a red state, which is kind of my favorite.
maynard james keenan
Right.
joe rogan
It's like open-mindedness and progressive, but yet surrounded by people with guns who farm.
Yeah, yeah.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, and that's kind of what we have kind of up in, like in Jerome, Sedona area.
It's very much that mix.
Yeah.
But, you know, it's, I don't know, I've always had a thing for Austin.
I just like coming here.
It's that town that makes sense to me.
joe rogan
Yeah, as did I. That's why I moved here.
maynard james keenan
Los Angeles, I don't resonate with Los Angeles.
I don't resonate with far kind of more right cities either.
Is there a right city?
I don't know.
It just seems like there's...
joe rogan
They don't even exist, do they?
That's the thing about you get a group of people together.
They almost always become a Democrat city.
maynard james keenan
That could be, yeah.
joe rogan
It's weird.
It's fascinating that you just get enough numbers and they go blue.
Almost always.
maynard james keenan
Alright.
joe rogan
That's the big fear about Texas, is that you get enough people come here, it's gonna go blue.
They're all worried that they're gonna lose that fucking weird edge of freedom that makes Texas unique and independent.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, Texas.
I don't think you have anything to worry about, Texas.
Texas is an amazing state, and it's just going to maintain its identity through whatever.
joe rogan
Hopefully.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, I like it.
I hope.
It's just...
When you see that video from 1985, what's interesting about that, that was pre-internet, right?
So the identity of that was kind of organic.
People just decided to all meet at this point.
maynard james keenan
That was ground zero for ecstasy.
joe rogan
Dallas was, right?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, but when I was at that club, it had come here in its purest form, and I was still in the military, and I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to chance that.
joe rogan
Getting caught with it?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, or I don't know.
Like, they said you couldn't...
It wasn't technically illegal.
It just wasn't legal.
you know, it was that weird thing, but like, when there's just always that clause in the middle of it, you're like, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, but up to our discretion.
So, like, you know, and I'm not going to...
I'm not going to chance it because maybe they would detect it somehow and, you know, I'd be fucked and sent to fucking the brig.
joe rogan
There's a podcast called Psychedelic Salon.
There's a guy named Lorenzo who runs it, who has also been a guest on the podcast.
But he was a pretty straight-laced guy and he was living in Texas.
I think it was Dallas.
And then did Ecstasy for the first time.
And was like, whoa.
Like, okay.
Like, this is a different fucking world.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
I can see why people might do this.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And then he became not just a hippie, but a guy who runs a podcast that plays, like, old Alan Watts speeches and Terence McKenna things.
I mean, Psychedelic Salon is probably, like, the best resource of, like, just psychedelic conversations and...
And it's run by this guy who's – God, I think he was a lawyer, wasn't he?
Do you remember?
I forget what his – but he was like a super straight-laced guy who someone turned him on to it.
It's like Jack Harrow, the guy who wrote The Emperor Has No Clothes.
That guy was a – Like a Goldwater Republican and got divorced, met some new gal, they smoked pot together, and then all of a sudden they became this like hemp activist and, you know, became this like super open-minded hippie who's writing books on mushrooms and marijuana.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I can see that.
Because those things are, you know, they alter your perspective and they open up neural pathways that hadn't been open to you before.
Now, I wonder if you're a kid who grew up in that thing as a young kid and you tried it.
If it wouldn't have the same effect because you're not—that consciousness shift, that near-death kind of thing in your body or whatever that shifts your perspective, that opens up new possibilities, if that was always kind of present in you,
are you a person who would build something interesting or go down some interesting path, or would it take you— Trudging along in the world that you live in and all of a sudden having that moment, that consciousness opening thing that you've already established what you think the world is and then it changes your perspective.
joe rogan
Yeah, I've met some people that started out that way.
They started out like very liberal, open-minded, progressive, drugs and free thinking.
And then they got annoyed with all the negative aspects of it and they eventually became conservative.
They eventually realized like, hey, hard work and dedication and discipline are very important components of a successful existence.
maynard james keenan
Interesting how that flips, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah.
maynard james keenan
I can see that.
I can see that.
That makes sense.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's just...
What's one of the beautiful things about America is that there are so many different ways to live.
And you can find these little patches of humans that sort of have just gotten to this different mindset together.
You know?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, not easy to arrive at.
joe rogan
No.
It's like there's so many – I mean there's different ways to live your life and there's different cities that you can go to and they'll help you with that.
They'll feed that vibe or destroy it or turn you into them or, you know, turn you jaded like the New York City vibe.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
Yeah.
I grew up in a small town, so that's kind of where I resonate more.
I feed off of a larger city vibe when I'm there in it for those temporary moments.
joe rogan
But then I got to retreat back to population 500. Yeah, even when I lived in LA, I didn't live in LA. I lived outside of it in Ventura County and just, you know, dealing with coyotes and shit.
That to me made more sense.
I need some peace.
I mean, I have friends that love to be on top of it.
They love living in Manhattan on the 34th floor.
maynard james keenan
I always kind of lived right in that kind of near between Cahuenga and Wilton in the Hollywood Hill area where you get like coyotes the size of fucking Buick area.
joe rogan
The Hollywood Hills, it's always been weird, because it is kind of urban, but it's kind of not.
Like, it's really quick to get into, like, you get to Chateau Marmont in, like, five minutes.
maynard james keenan
Or, you know, needles and bum shit.
Like, that's right there, and Chateau Marmont's right there, and then, like, the Gucci's right there, and then there's, like, a coyote and, you know, fighting over a fucking raven and fighting over a rabbit.
joe rogan
Well, especially now.
Like, have you been now and seen the, like, the human wildlife is out of control now?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, it's nuts.
I don't know what to, you know, I have no...
I can't really speak on it because I have no solution.
I don't like speaking about things that I don't think I have maybe like a suggestion of a solution.
unidentified
I just, it's a mess.
maynard james keenan
I can acknowledge it's a mess and I have no idea how to get out of it.
joe rogan
Does it shock you?
Do you see how much different things are like three years, like post-COVID? Yeah.
maynard james keenan
It does.
I just assume.
And I guess my retreat is to try to grow more food, to teach my friends how to grow food, and to understand how to, you know, distillation, roasting coffees, like growing things, producing things in-house.
That's my default of understanding, like, whatever's going to happen, unless it's a meteor or something crazy that interrupts, you know, what we recognize to be as weather patterns and growing seasons and those kind of things.
Whatever's happening politically, financially in the world, if we can just remember how to secure fresh water and grow things and survive whatever this is, I don't have any answers other than that.
That's, you know, that's my default, is to grow things and to not hoard, to actually be active and conscious, aware, in the space to figure out how to survive this thing.
joe rogan
It might be the only thing you can do.
Because it doesn't seem to me that anybody has real answers.
They have opinions and they express those opinions and some are more confident than others.
But it doesn't seem like there's any real clear path as to how things...
I think it's just a time thing.
I think it's like the Hindus came up with the concept of the yugas, the different ages of civilization.
I think that was very astute.
I think they were accurate.
I think there's something to that, that things have to go in sort of a natural cycle of success and decay.
maynard james keenan
It'll come to a head and we'll figure out a way through it.
joe rogan
Yeah, you just gotta take care of yourself while it's all getting weird.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
And also help other people take care of themselves, too.
Right.
That's where the walking dead shit goes sideways when people are just...
Not taking care of each other.
joe rogan
Right.
Yeah, that's what's interesting about that show or interesting about any concept of the apocalypse end times.
The real concern is other humans, is how humans react to this deterioration of civility.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
Yeah, I would like to think, because I'm an idiot and romantic, I'd like to think that we would—most of us would choose the right way to do a thing.
But when faced with impossible situations, I think that we're probably going to go back to our primitive— I think many of us will choose the right way.
joe rogan
But the problem is there's been so many people that developed in sort of a— An environment where you didn't really have to have earned character, you know,
where you don't really develop the concepts of discipline and of, you know, of postponing pleasure and, you know, to farm off All the important things that need to be done to have society function correctly on other people but yet expect it to work.
And then it goes away and you never really developed the discipline or the skill or the understanding of what's required.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, just understanding, you know, and I don't, this is of, I don't know, I'm just kind of making this up, but it seems like that 40-hour work week, I know that's kind of a standard, like, you know, that's your weird corporate, that's the way we've grown up, but if you can do a thing and focus on doing a thing where you're, you know, you're working your 30- to 60-hour week of something that you're doing...
That I feel like as long as it's feeding you in some way, that's what I do.
I don't have like...
I don't work like, I don't know, 10 hours and then coast for the rest of the fucking week.
I'm working...
That moment where you're starting your workout and your heart rate's going up and you're like, man, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this today.
Well, you've got to just get past that first five minutes of getting to the next thing.
And then you can do that thing for fucking 70 hours a week.
You can get past that little initial...
joe rogan
The resistance.
maynard james keenan
The resistance.
joe rogan
Yeah.
That's the thing that people don't learn how to do.
And, you know, now people are struggling with remote work because they don't want to go back to an office where they're forced to actually get past the resistance.
You can kind of like fuck off and you use an app that pretends your cursor is moving around and you get caught jerking off on Zoom.
unidentified
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
No, I didn't.
unidentified
When?
joe rogan
But you know what I'm saying?
It's like you are a guy who wants to be stimulated often with your endeavors.
And some people never learn that.
And that's sad to me.
That's unfortunate because I think we all could be that.
And we all could find satisfaction and just a real sense of purpose and a real sense of – I want to say accomplishment but that's not really the word.
It's like engagement where life becomes rewarding and stimulating.
It's like you have these robust moments, these exciting things that are happening in these endeavors, these things that you're choosing to do that are complicated and difficult to do and if you can get past that initial resistance.
But some people just never develop that and that's what's unfortunate to me about people that just work.
They just have a job and the job doesn't engage them and they just want to get out of there.
It's like there's other ways to live life and if you could find a life that is engaging and if you could find things that do stimulate you and find things that you do Get real satisfaction out of the complexity of them and the learning and the growing and the constant stimulation of those things.
maynard james keenan
I think part of it, and this is just my upbringing, I don't know that this was everybody's, but my dad and my stepmother were very inspirational for me to be able to always assume that maybe you don't know what you think you know.
And also work toward a thing so that you can develop just that focus and those skills and understanding connecting A to B to C.
Like, we're going to weed this thing, we're going to till this ground, we're going to do this thing, and at the end of the day, you're not going to know what you just did.
We're not going to know until like next week or four weeks from now or six weeks from now.
Now we're weeding that spot to make sure that this thing survives.
And then you're harvesting that thing and we're going to have that thing for dinner.
When you start connecting that all the way back to the cause and effect, that was a very important lesson in how some of the things I did wrong so we don't get to have this part.
So understanding everything you had to do for your day to enjoy the thing you're doing, but also understanding you're doing it for a bigger purpose.
You have a connection with it.
I don't know.
That was instilled in me early.
And I think you're right.
People that don't really understand, if you're doing this thing just because you're trying to survive and you're not connecting...
The beginning to the end.
Yeah, I guess you are miserable.
You're going to pick up the app that's going to move the cursor around because you're not really helping anyone.
joe rogan
They don't have examples of those people around them, which is part of the problem of all of us.
You were talking about how all art is kind of inspired by other art.
Well, this is kind of an art to living life.
And sometimes we don't have local examples of someone who's doing it in a way that you find engaging and stimulating.
And so you don't know what to do.
And if you're surrounded by people that are just using that app to move the cursor around, you think this is just the way to do it.
And then you seek thrills in drugs or in entertainment or in something that just numbs you.
maynard james keenan
The dopamine addiction?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Dopamine, alcohol, jerking off, gambling, anything.
Something that just, like, removes you from the...
maynard james keenan
Sounds like a Saturday morning to me, sir.
A Sunday morning and a Monday morning and a...
I'm just kidding.
I don't gamble.
unidentified
At all?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I feel like it's a treading water disconnect from the bigger picture of things.
Yeah, that's a whole other six-hour conversation, right?
Are you just a clock?
You're just like an hourglass?
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
You're just marking time until you're done?
That's a lot of people.
That's sad to me.
joe rogan
Well, it's sad to them, too.
That's why so many people are depressed.
It's one of the reasons.
maynard james keenan
Well, you know, we've talked about before, like, the action-reaction, the immediate, like, the immediacy of everything.
I want this thing, and I'm bitching because Amazon didn't deliver it to me.
Before I ordered it.
They should already know what I want.
And it should come yesterday.
Life is just not like that.
And when that goes away and you're trying to figure out how to find fresh water, fuck, good luck to you.
joe rogan
There are so many people that develop things that do give you that immediate satisfaction.
Like TikTok.
You're just constantly getting stimulated versus being a farmer.
I've always been fascinated with farmers because when you talk to them...
maynard james keenan
That's the long game, dude.
joe rogan
Oh my god, that's the long game.
The amount of work involved, you talk to a real farmer, a real get-up-at-five-in-the-morning farmer, work till dark, and be exhausted, and then do it all over again, and not get rich!
maynard james keenan
And, you know, all the challenges come along with it because now I'm getting my phones blowing up the last couple days because we're spotting a bobcat in the neighborhood.
Well, that means now I've got to bring...
I'm not even there and I've got to make sure that I'm checking with Jen and make sure she's bringing the ducks home early and paying attention in the morning.
Don't let them out too soon because we want to make sure there's people around.
And I'm literally doing things like peeing into a fucking water bottle and spreading it around the perimeter of the fence because some of those predator cats, they don't like...
They think that that territory's been marked.
joe rogan
Does that work?
maynard james keenan
Well, I hope so because I'm the idiot not to mow in bottles of piss along the fence line.
My buddy Andrew's like, yeah, you piss along the fence line.
I'm like, dude, I'm not going to go out in my yard and pee on the fence with all my neighbors staring at me.
I'm going to have to like...
Do the weirder thing, which is pee in a bottle than four.
If it works, then great, because I've got, you know, two dozen ducks that I have to protect them.
joe rogan
So what do you do?
Do you hire someone to, like, watch the ducks or kill the bobcat?
maynard james keenan
Well, you can't really kill the bobcat.
It's protected.
So you just have to pay attention to when the ducks are by themselves and do things like pee on your fence line and, like, hope that they just pick...
joe rogan
Are you allowed to chase the bobcat off?
What are the laws in terms of...
maynard james keenan
I think you have to call the local fish and game to see if they can relocate it, maybe.
But if that bobcat finds out I have ducks...
There's not much I'm gonna be able to do.
It will come back until it gets all of the ducks.
joe rogan
Yeah, we had that in California with chickens and coyotes.
They got all my fucking chickens.
Just a matter of time.
maynard james keenan
Just mark your calendar because eventually, like, in about, you know, a year you're gonna, like, the video surface where I'm out there half-naked peeing on a fence chasing off a bobcat, you know, with a fucking paintball gun.
joe rogan
Yeah.
A lot of people just hire someone to deal with that.
maynard james keenan
But that's not us.
This is what we do.
This is part of our world.
We raise ducks.
We raise quail.
My wife's a, I don't know if I told you this, she's a falconer, licensed falconer now.
So we have a hawk named Loki.
Whoa.
So she has a full-on hawk.
joe rogan
So when you say licensed falconer, do you use that falcon to go do stuff?
Is that falcon going to snatch some quail for you?
maynard james keenan
Well, yeah, it loves the quail, but we can take it around the vineyards eventually, and it'll chase off ground squirrels and rabbits out of the vineyard.
joe rogan
I was at a Tohono Ranch recently, which is in central California, and there's more ground squirrels than you could possibly imagine.
They were telling me that the body mass The biomass of ground squirrels is greater than the biomass of cows they have.
So they have beef cows everywhere.
There's enormous cows everywhere.
But there's more body weight in ground squirrels than there are cows.
maynard james keenan
That's nuts.
joe rogan
There's so many of them.
There's little holes everywhere you go.
maynard james keenan
I have a solution.
His name's Loki.
joe rogan
Loki would have to go to work.
I watched an eagle catch something.
I don't know what it caught, but a golden eagle.
I watched it snatch something and then drag it up into the cover.
I couldn't see.
But I watched it come down, snatch this thing, and then it was moving with this thing on the ground.
maynard james keenan
It's incredible how they can see that from so far away and like...
Boom!
joe rogan
And those little fuckers are trying to get away from that eagle, too.
This is a beautiful dance.
But to be there, right when it caught it, was wild.
I tried to get close enough to take a photo of it, but I couldn't.
But it's, you know, that's the balance.
Like, you have to have that.
And when you fuck that balance up with, like, a giant pack of ducks that are all in this one, it's like, this is so much food in this one spot.
Why am I going anywhere else?
Fuck ground squirrels.
These things don't even fly.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, and they'll come after your ducks.
joe rogan
Yeah.
What do you use the ducks for?
Eggs?
Or you eat them?
unidentified
Eggs.
maynard james keenan
No, the eggs.
I make the...
Well, Chris at the Osteria makes...
uses the yolks for our pasta, and then eventually when I open up the brunch place, we'll use the whites to do a quiche.
joe rogan
Duck eggs have a weird way of, like, coating the surface of your mouth.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, the roof of your mouth, like...
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's a weird egg.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
That's why I like when you put them in the pasta, it actually works better.
Rather than just having the scrambled duck egg, I don't prefer the scrambled duck egg.
I like using the yolk for the pasta.
We'll use a couple of yolks, but mainly like an egg white with some yolks, quiche base.
joe rogan
We were talking about this before I know, but are you getting your wheat from other sources?
Like you getting it from outside the United States?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, the best, generally speaking, the best wheat flour is an Italian milled flour, but a significant portion of that flour is actually hard wheat, winter wheat from Arizona.
joe rogan
So you mix them like a blend?
maynard james keenan
Well, they do.
All the wheat that gets grown around the Midwest and Arizona ends up going to a central commodity, so it goes to a central area.
Then it gets shipped to a place like Italy, and they mill it and blend it and sell it back to you.
joe rogan
And what's the benefit of adding the Arizona wheat?
maynard james keenan
Just the way that it works with pasta, the gluten structure of the pasta, that hard winter wheat from Arizona is a good ingredient to make it.
joe rogan
Just for texture?
maynard james keenan
Texture.
Holding the pasta together, keeping the form.
It's pretty cool to know that there's a significant amount of Arizona wheat in our flour that we use.
Even though it's not milled in the state, it's a part of the blend.
joe rogan
And is this an heirloom wheat?
Is this a modified wheat?
maynard james keenan
We were using quite a bit of heirloom flour from Arizona, but the combination of the blend, whatever the Italians do to blend that thing together, it just ends up being better.
So we're trying as much as we can to use Arizona wheat blended in.
We blend more in.
When it comes in, just because we're trying to support the flour from Arizona.
But at the end of the day, it's got to have structure.
It's got to be tasty.
So we've got to do what we've got to do to make the end product be presentable and awesome.
joe rogan
How much do you pay attention to glyphosate and the real debate now about how much glyphosate is getting into our food supply?
You don't know what Roundup is?
maynard james keenan
Oh yeah, Roundup.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We don't use it in the vineyard.
We used to because we thought that's what you're supposed to do, right?
And then our southern Arizona, the 80-acre vineyard down there, we have awesome ground cover down there.
And so we just mow the ground cover down or mulch it down.
So we're not using any of the pre-emergent or the weeding shit anymore.
joe rogan
It's a big debate now because there was a recent study that I think it was like 80% of people they tested had glyphosate in their bodies.
maynard james keenan
I would imagine it's all of us.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
Because we used it on everything forever.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a creepy herbicide.
And also, I think they've genetically modified certain foods to have glyphosate in them.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Which is crazy.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's like...
maynard james keenan
So we're doing our best to not, you know, we use as much as we can just, you know, manual weeding or we use the ground cover in the vineyard to eliminate that part of the process.
joe rogan
Do you pay attention to people like Joel Salatin from Polyface Farms or any of these people that have, like, regenerative agricultural practices where they...
It's interesting because I don't know if it's scalable.
Like, the big question is, like...
maynard james keenan
That ends up being the issue.
Too many people.
joe rogan
Right.
unidentified
Too many people not growing food, which is the big problem in cities.
maynard james keenan
Too many people not growing food, too many people in general, or just the scale of doing that thing with the current, the way we do farming.
Like, you know, the debate of, you know...
Migrant workers coming in and working on things.
It's a lot.
It's a lot to do.
So that's why you end up defaulting to things like Roundup and those things because they're trying to make the margin and cut the corner to get the thing done.
It's an economy of scale, I guess.
So we're trying as best we can to do that in-house.
We grow our own food for The Trattoria Osseria in the place in Scottsdale, we do as much as we can to grow food for those locations.
So the stuff that's on the pizza, the stuff that's stuffed in the raviolis, the salad you get on the Labrador plate.
A significant amount of that is what we grow.
You start to supplement.
So when we supplement, we supplement from local growers in Arizona that are, you know, organic growers that are not using the Roundup.
joe rogan
But again, you're dealing with a couple medium-sized restaurants.
maynard james keenan
Three restaurants, yeah.
We're not talking about a chain of olive gardens across the country.
unidentified
Right.
maynard james keenan
Or just a city.
Yeah.
joe rogan
A city of 15 million people that aren't growing food.
maynard james keenan
Right.
joe rogan
Just the sheer bulk of the amount of stuff that's consumed.
maynard james keenan
Right.
joe rogan
That's the weirdest thing about cities, is that we've figured out this way to make these centers where you have extraordinary populations with, you know, cement structures and, you know, water piped in underground, but there's no food.
Everything has to be trucked in.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I'm sure there's somebody smarter than me could figure that out.
But it's all at margins, isn't it?
I don't know.
You can't put a bunch of hamsters in a terrarium or aquarium for people to come and buy.
Because if you put too many in there, you'll come back and half of them are dead.
joe rogan
They eat themselves?
maynard james keenan
They'll fucking kill each other.
joe rogan
Really?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Just from overpopulation?
maynard james keenan
They will turn on each other and they will eat each other.
joe rogan
I've read a study once where we're talking about rat population density studies that their behavior mirrors the behavior of high population cities.
That you have a certain amount of mental illness that occurs, a certain amount of violence that occurs.
I can see that, yeah.
That's just a function of...
maynard james keenan
And then, you know, we would get in the shipment of the new hamsters this week, and I would have to take this aquarium, move it away, put a new aquarium there, put fresh shavings and stuff in it, and then move those hamsters and those and put them in together that way.
If I put the new hamsters in with the old hamsters in their environment that they've been pissing in for a couple days, they fight.
You have to basically introduce them to a new environment so that it's new to all of them, and it's new smells, and then they won't fight as much.
joe rogan
So we need to start a new country, as you're saying?
maynard james keenan
Correct.
joe rogan
That's the move.
maynard james keenan
Hey.
joe rogan
Where do we go?
Maybe with global warming, Greenland will be available.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
Or we could just take all the garbage and pile and compact it into bricks and make an island.
joe rogan
Ah!
maynard james keenan
Garbage island.
joe rogan
That's not a bad idea.
Something has to happen.
maynard james keenan
I patented that just now.
Copyright.
joe rogan
Yeah, I wonder.
I wonder when you look at the human race is approaching 8 billion people.
At what point in time do we all exhibit?
Is that the future of the human race?
It's like the worst aspects of urban living.
maynard james keenan
Just universally?
I think it's going to sort itself out.
I think it's going to end up coming to a head in some way.
I don't know.
Civil War, meteor, virus, something will...
joe rogan
Alien invasion?
maynard james keenan
Alien invasion, turn us into fuel.
joe rogan
Or the other concept is that when people live in these urban areas, they actually have less kids.
And that slowly population growth sort of declines naturally because people could become obsessed with their careers and, you know...
maynard james keenan
That doesn't seem to be happening.
joe rogan
It is happening in some places, apparently.
It's like Japan has an issue with that right now.
And some different cities do have...
maynard james keenan
They don't have the sustainable population for their future of what they're doing?
joe rogan
Yeah, the thought is that people are having so few children that ultimately, at one point in time, you're going to see a population decline.
And that there's going to be this sort of an implosion.
Like Elon's actually talked about that, the importance of...
Having children, you know, like so many people aren't having children that live in these urban areas that you're going to see a collapse.
maynard james keenan
You know, I'm sure there's a mathematician out there that can say, okay, for every person, how many kids should I have?
One?
Two?
joe rogan
Right.
maynard james keenan
You know, so if between my wife and I, there's two kids, is that enough?
joe rogan
That seems like enough.
unidentified
One.
joe rogan
But if you only have one, then naturally you're going to have a decline.
Two people have one kid, you've got to decline.
maynard james keenan
Right.
joe rogan
That's a lot of what's going on, and maybe some people are not having kids at all.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Because they're dedicated to their careers.
maynard james keenan
Okay, makes sense.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
Voucher system.
joe rogan
Voucher?
Oh, then you've got the government involved.
Telling people what to do and not to do.
That's never good.
maynard james keenan
Sometimes it's okay.
joe rogan
You live in, like, how many people live in Jerome?
maynard james keenan
500. Jesus.
joe rogan
That might be the way to go.
You like it, huh?
But the contrast between that and touring has got to be pretty cool.
But if you just live there with no touring, you might get a little bored.
maynard james keenan
You know, you've got Flagstaff to the north, you've got Sedona, you've got Phoenix to the south.
joe rogan
Right, you can visit other spots.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, it's not that far away.
Prescott's a little hopping little town.
It's pretty great.
joe rogan
Prescott's a hopping little town.
maynard james keenan
It's kind of cowboy, but it's got some fun activities.
joe rogan
There's one area, maybe it's Prescott, that's one of the best places to observe the night sky.
maynard james keenan
Well, a lot of places are like that.
Jerome's amazing for that because there's definitely a light discipline as far as like an ordinance is about having too many lights on.
joe rogan
Is there?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
So you can actually see.
unidentified
It's like this.
maynard james keenan
It's crazy.
joe rogan
And it's just for that purpose?
maynard james keenan
I think.
Partially.
joe rogan
You can only do that in smaller areas.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, it's amazing.
The stars in Arizona are incredible because there's less humidity in the air.
So just that less humidity in the air doesn't kind of disperse the light.
So it's focused.
You can see all the stars and you can see the Milky Way.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
maynard james keenan
You can tell when that's Venus.
You can tell that that's Venus, you know?
That's a planet.
That's a star.
joe rogan
That's the beautiful thing about living in a place where it doesn't have light pollution.
There's a humbling aspect to staring out at the cosmos that really lets you know, like, hey, we're a part of this enormous, impossibly big thing.
And it's not just about your career.
It's not just about your credit card debt and how much you owe in your car.
maynard james keenan
The noise of the big city can kind of drown a lot of that out.
joe rogan
The noise and the light.
I mean, it's not a...
That environment where you have extreme light pollution and no access to the stars, it's very unnatural and very unusual in terms of a human history.
It's never happened before.
Up until the last couple hundred years with the invention of electricity and the Industrial Revolution.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I never really think of that, yeah.
joe rogan
They didn't have that.
So people had sort of a, there was a humbling aspect to the night that allowed people to just like get a perspective and also just the beauty and the majesty of the sky and the looking at the cosmos and looking at the Milky Way.
It put things into focus in a way that I don't think people in cities have access to now.
maynard james keenan
Come visit the desert.
joe rogan
Did you ever see anything up there in the sky?
Look at that.
Where's that?
Prescott.
maynard james keenan
That's Prescott.
joe rogan
So is it Prescott?
Is that the place?
unidentified
I don't know.
maynard james keenan
I was trying to find that specifically.
unidentified
Prescott.
maynard james keenan
Say it right.
joe rogan
I'm sorry.
Prescott.
maynard james keenan
Like Biscuit.
joe rogan
Prescott.
Prescott, Arizona.
maynard james keenan
You'll get yelled at by the locals.
joe rogan
Well, fuck them.
That's what you want to yell at me about?
unidentified
That's beautiful, though.
maynard james keenan
Goddamn.
Yeah, it's insane.
And that's pretty much what I see at night.
joe rogan
It looks that good.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, well, sometimes like that, one of those, go down to that one there, you can see the Milky Way more.
Yeah.
unidentified
Wow.
maynard james keenan
So, you know, that's, you know, when you're at night on my porch, that's, I can see that.
That's a little intense because they've definitely, like, done more of a time lapse, so it's kind of, like, really sunk in, but, like, on your average night in Arizona, I can see all those things.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
That's fucking amazing.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Do you ever see some weird shit flying around?
maynard james keenan
Well, I didn't.
I was abducted.
What'd you learn?
I learned that I don't like butt stuff.
unidentified
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
Allegedly.
I don't know.
I don't really see anything there.
I haven't seen anything weirder, you know, kind of extraterrestrial in nature that I know of.
I might be looking right at a thing and I didn't know that it was a thing, but I don't know.
I'm just so enamored with that sky that that to me is like, that's extraterrestrial enough for me just to see that's just a majesty.
joe rogan
Were you living in Arizona when the Phoenix Lights thing happened?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, that was there.
Yeah.
No idea what that was.
You know, one of those things where...
joe rogan
Did you ever see any of it?
maynard james keenan
No, I didn't see it.
I saw videos of it, but I didn't see it.
joe rogan
Do you know anybody who saw any of it?
That's a weird moment in urban history, where, like, mass sightings in this one area.
maynard james keenan
You know, I think of...
I might have talked about this with you at some point.
Like, to me, it's almost like it's...
I feel like as we go forward in time, maybe there's some kind of technology that allows us to look back in time.
You pay your fee at Disneyland, and you can put the goggles on, and it opens a portal in a time frame where you're just allowed to look.
You can just look.
You can't touch.
But then if you're paying attention, you see the dude looking.
joe rogan
Right, you see the portal occasionally.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, the portal occasionally.
And it's just a remote viewing from a future time when they can actually, like, peak.
They can't meddle, they can't touch, they can just look.
And it's just an anomaly in our simulation.
joe rogan
I was reading this thing about quantum computing today.
And you could probably relate to this because you've done some music with the Fibonacci sequence.
And where they entered the Fibonacci sequence into quantum computing and they found it had something to do with different ways that time expresses itself.
So you can find this because I'm going to butcher this.
But I was reading it and I remember here it is.
Scientists fed the Fibonacci sequence into a quantum computer and something strange happened.
You can have the system behave as if there are two distinct directions of time.
I think it's just a matter of time before they figure something like that out.
maynard james keenan
But should we?
We're going to.
Aren't there movies that start this way?
joe rogan
There are, but there are movies that start that way because we understand how the human mind works.
This constant lust for technological innovation is never going to be quenched.
And I think if we continue to stay alive, we're going to come up with something that's going to change everything about the way we interact with reality.
And it's probably going to happen within our lifetime.
It seems like the exponential...
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
And I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing.
It probably depends on who's at the wheel.
joe rogan
It's a thing.
Good or bad is, you know, relative.
But I think it's going to...
We live in an amazing time because both things exist.
You have wine, and you have farmers and people cultivating food and creating art, and you also have these disruptive technologies that are being implemented in a way that we really have no idea what the consequences are.
And it's all happening simultaneously.
And it makes the hikes in the mountains more attractive.
It makes the staring at the sky in Prescott more interesting.
That you do live in these simultaneous sort of timelines.
unidentified
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
That's a good thought.
joe rogan
Yeah.
You're not going to stop it.
I was having this conversation with my kids one night at dinner recently.
We were saying, if we just stop making new stuff right now, life's pretty good.
If we said, all the phones that we have right now, no more.
iPhone 14's the end of the line.
Just keep making them and keep fixing them, and that's it.
We don't need anything new.
But we'll never do that.
We're all just talking about it like, yeah, you're right.
maynard james keenan
That's why we're in a constant state of invading some other area that has some natural resources because we've got to get to the 16, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Gotta get to the Tesla that goes zero to 60 instantaneously.
That, you know, operates on some fucking gravity drive that allows you to punch a hole through space and time and pop up in Australia in half a second.
It's coming.
maynard james keenan
Just need a Subaru brat, man.
You'll get there.
joe rogan
Well, I'd imagine where you live, robust vehicles are probably very valuable.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I have an old 73 FJ. Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Those are the best.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
FJ40? Yep.
Yeah, and it's...
Of course, we redid it.
It's like a V8 engine in it.
joe rogan
Do you use like an LS swap?
Is that what they did?
Like an LS V8? Like a Chevy?
maynard james keenan
Probably.
joe rogan
Like a GM V8? Yeah.
maynard james keenan
It's a pretty amazing...
joe rogan
Those are beautiful cars, man.
Those FJ40s, like Icon out of California makes those where they do the V8 swap and it's just, when you're in one of them, they're so satisfying.
It's so mechanical and everything about it is like it speaks to you and it's so robust and Yeah, mine has little ammo boxes.
unidentified
Look at that.
joe rogan
Is that what you have?
One of those?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's how you get around?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
That keeps you grounded.
maynard james keenan
I mean, you know.
joe rogan
Is it a manual?
maynard james keenan
No, it's automatic.
I'm a pussy.
unidentified
Oh, how dare you.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I know.
joe rogan
Why didn't you get a manual?
maynard james keenan
Because...
You hate life?
You know, I'm lazy.
joe rogan
Yeah, see that one right there, 350 powered?
maynard james keenan
There's my, the other one, the tan one.
joe rogan
That's you?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, that's kind of one I have.
joe rogan
Those are gorgeous.
There's something about those.
That's like one of the coolest shapes that people have ever figured out for sort of an industrial vehicle or a That's perfect for a farm.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Do you know how to fix it?
Or do you hire someone to do it?
maynard james keenan
I've got guys that fix it.
I still have the old Subaru Brat.
joe rogan
You weren't kidding.
You really do have a Subaru Brat.
maynard james keenan
My wife stole it for the 24 hours of lemons races.
joe rogan
What the fuck is that?
maynard james keenan
That's your homework.
joe rogan
Fuck Le Mans.
Is that it?
maynard james keenan
Fuck yeah, man.
joe rogan
That's hilarious, is the El Camino of Japanese cars.
maynard james keenan
Yep.
But, you know, that was one of my first cars, so I knew how to change out the alternator, fix the clutch cable.
I can fix that one, to a point.
I would have to have a friend come in and help me if I had to rebuild an engine on it.
Yeah, I would have to go to another friend.
I can fix that.
The new cars and stuff, like, no, I'm lost.
joe rogan
No, no one can.
I mean, you have to really have a fucking education in computers.
The weirdest thing about cars today is, like, they're having a hard time finding chips for them.
maynard james keenan
Right.
joe rogan
It's like, it's hard to buy a new car.
Some of the new cars, there's, like, a backorder because they don't have chips.
maynard james keenan
Right.
joe rogan
Because everything relies on some sort of a centralized computer.
maynard james keenan
You know what doesn't have a chip?
joe rogan
Super Brat.
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
Does that 73 Toyota with the V8, does that have a chip?
maynard james keenan
Well, no, I think the engine is just old enough to where maybe it doesn't, but I don't know.
I would have to ask my guys.
joe rogan
Because a lot of the new ones, they actually do have, unfortunately, they do have a computer that powers it.
maynard james keenan
Probably is, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, because if you LS swap, they have like an ECU that sort of runs it.
maynard james keenan
Most likely it is that.
joe rogan
Still.
Like, those older Japanese cars are the very best cars when it comes to, like, robustness.
Like, those Toyota FJs, the FJ60s, the 62s.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, my dad, back in the day, like, 1973, the original little, it's not even the Tacoma, it's just the Toyota truck.
That thing back in 1973, he had it for decades.
The thing had, like...
One million miles on it or something insane.
joe rogan
Yeah, they're very valuable today because of that reason.
Because people realize, like, this is kind of fucking unique that these things are that robust.
They can last for so long.
maynard james keenan
I think by the time he actually had sold it to a guy, sold it to a guy, and they actually took it to the dump, and, like, they picked it up and it broke in half because, like, the engine was still good.
500,000 miles, I think, was on it.
But the frame was gone.
Like it was, you know, foot through the floor under Fred Flintstone down the road.
joe rogan
Yeah, but all that stuff can be repaired.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's just to be in a place like yours and to have those kind of vehicles, it's got to be very grounding for you.
You're driving around that farm and...
maynard james keenan
Yeah, you can't have a choice.
I have friends that show up and go, hey man, let's, you know, I want to go out and check out the vineyard.
And I look at their car and like, yeah.
joe rogan
Not in that thing.
maynard james keenan
Hop in.
Hop in.
joe rogan
How big is your vineyard?
How many acres is it?
maynard james keenan
I have 80 acres in southern Arizona.
I have several sites up in northern Arizona.
A 2-acre, a 3-acre, a 4-acre, a 30-acre, and a 5-acre.
joe rogan
And how do you pick these areas that you're going to acquire?
maynard james keenan
Available water.
Paying attention to water rights, ditch rights, groundwater rights.
joe rogan
And you expand based on the need?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
Just expense.
I mean, there's a huge expense in terms of vineyards.
Just quick math.
Let's assume you own a piece of land.
And depending on where that land is, it's going to be a different price.
Like if you buy an acre of land in the Verde Valley, it's going to be $50,000 to $100,000 for an acre of empty land.
Now you've got to put power and water on it.
So if you're getting a vineyard, you're not going to do an acre.
You're going to do 20 acres or whatever.
Southern Arizona, maybe 15 grand an acre, maybe 10. So depending on where you're going to do it.
So let's say you own the land, you've already paid whatever that number is.
Now you got to make sure that there's power and water to that.
So let's say you've got it graded, you've got power and you've got water on it.
That's a huge expense just by itself, right?
Just to plant an acre of vineyards is about $30,000 an acre.
So with that 10-acre site, you're already up to $300,000, right?
But the vines don't produce fruit for four years.
unidentified
Whoa.
maynard james keenan
So you're not going to see your first grape.
And even if you get your grape, now you got to wait, you know, you got to make it, you got to age it, you got to bottle it, you got to sell it.
So from your first, assuming you own the acres, and assuming you have power and water and it's been graded, and you're $30,000 in for your first, for that first planting, that first year, you're not going to see your first dollar for at least six, seven years.
joe rogan
So when you acquired your first farm, was it an existing winery?
maynard james keenan
No.
The land that I planted the Judas block on, I planted that vineyard.
And I was sourcing fruit from other vineyards for a while.
joe rogan
How long did you think about doing that before you actually pulled the trigger?
maynard james keenan
I was kind of mulling it over from starting around 99, 2000. Wow.
And then I planted my first vineyards in 2003. Were you like, what the fuck am I doing?
Yes.
Today, in this very moment, I'm wondering what the fuck did I do and what am I doing?
joe rogan
How many people do you have working for you now if you have that many different farms?
maynard james keenan
Between Pucifer, the Pucifer store, all of our distribution people, our retail people, our behind-the-scenes seller workers, I'm about 110 families that we employ around Arizona.
joe rogan
And so when you develop a piece of land, say if you want to start and expand into a new piece of land, Who do you have?
Does the person have to relocate there?
Do you have to have someone that can commute to the spot and make sure it's running okay for the four years?
maynard james keenan
So down in southern Arizona, Jesse lives on site with his wife, and we have a couple full-time people.
And if you're farming it properly, you need seasonal work, you need people to come in, like a large number of people to come in and prune, a large number of people to come in and do...
Shoot thinning and blah, blah, blah.
And then for picking, of course, you've got that season.
You have people around that you have to do the pick and you have to work with a labor contractor to make sure that you have those numbers of people there to do that.
But annually, year round, those two or three people are on site all year round.
joe rogan
I would imagine that is always in the back of your head, that you have all these different moving parts going on constantly.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
How do you rest?
maynard james keenan
Um, you just, you either do or you don't, right?
You just rest, you know?
unidentified
But that's a lot of, a lot of noise, constantly.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, yeah.
That's why you watch television nights and fall asleep.
joe rogan
God, from the time that you started doing that, did you ever imagine that it would be what it is now?
maynard james keenan
No, I thought it was going to be a much smaller thing.
It's still a pretty small thing, but as far as all the moving parts and all the beautiful things that we've accomplished, no regrets.
I think there's a pretty cool thing we're doing.
joe rogan
It is very cool.
That's when I really started getting interested in you, honestly, when I found out about your vineyard.
I was like, huh.
What a fucking weird guy.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
He's doing that?
maynard james keenan
There's a couple people in our genre, not even really our genre, just like musicians.
There's a couple people that are doing stuff.
I think Pink is involved in her wine production in some way.
But other than her and a couple people, not anybody here that has a wine label, generally speaking, is...
They're just putting their name on it, or they have somebody doing it for them, and they might be kind of involved, but they're not as involved as I am.
joe rogan
No.
unidentified
It's so involved.
joe rogan
Do you ever anticipate not doing music and just doing that, or do you think you're always going to be doing everything?
maynard james keenan
I think I'll be doing everything.
I don't really see any reason to give up either one, because they can coexist.
There's definitely time for both, especially if you're Organized like I am and create those spaces for creating music and touring, but knowing that it's not up to you when it's harvest season, this is harvest season.
So I like that balance of like, I had to respond to what Mother Nature says on this front, but on the music side I can kind of have a little more flexibility and create when the spirit moves me.
joe rogan
It has to be a wild challenge though to figure out how to scale that.
As it was happening, how did you figure out how to make it all work?
maynard james keenan
I don't know that I have yet.
We're figuring it out still.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
It's very complex, but it makes for a very unique experience, I would imagine, in life.
maynard james keenan
Well, again, going back to, like, you started this thing, and seven years later, and then I put that wine in a bottle, and I try to forget about that bottle, to then open that bottle another ten years later, to go, oh, fuck, man, that's...
I did that.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And there's a time when you should open it too, right?
maynard james keenan
Depends on the grape.
Honestly, you know.
joe rogan
How do you know?
maynard james keenan
You don't.
I mean, especially in an area that we're growing and the grapes that we're not quite sure about yet.
There's definitely things in wine that help it be an ageable wine that won't fall apart right away.
But, you know.
There's chemical things you can kind of figure out, like what do we think might age better.
But until you actually open that bottle 15 years later, you don't really know.
You think.
You might know, but you don't know.
joe rogan
Have you ever heard of a book called The Immortality Key?
There's a guy named Brian Murorescu who became obsessed with the Lucidian mysteries and the ancient Greeks who drank wine and invented democracy and invented all these different things in this like one particular area of enlightenment.
And he started studying this and found very distinct evidence that the wine, what they were calling wine back then, was wine that was mixed in with a bunch of different things.
And a lot of it was like ergot, and a lot of it was psychedelic compounds.
maynard james keenan
Probably, yeah.
joe rogan
Through this, they've actually developed a field of study at Harvard through his work.
And he came on the podcast and talked about it and sort of opened up this field of study.
The book is really fascinating because he was obsessed with this for decades and studied it for a long time.
And then they eventually found physical evidence in these old wine vessels.
maynard james keenan
Okay.
Because it would be there like that.
That's the cool thing about those.
There's always going to be some chamber that's going to be unearthed that nobody knew was there.
And if it's Greece or early Roman times, there's going to be wine in that thing.
joe rogan
That's what wine was.
maynard james keenan
There's going to be some bottles in there.
joe rogan
Wine was like fermented grapes, but it was mixed in with a bunch of other stuff.
That was what they used to...
When we think of wine, we think of what you make.
But what you make is not just the grapes, right?
Not just fermented grapes.
There's stuff in there.
maynard james keenan
No, no.
It's just grapes.
joe rogan
But you add some sort of yeast?
maynard james keenan
Well, yeah.
I mean, well, no.
The yeast already exists on the grapes.
And so our fermentation process is kick-started by the yeast that exists on those grapes.
So I just do wild ferments.
I don't add yeast.
Some instances I do, depending on the fruit coming in, and if I'm observing there's going to be maybe some problems with that particular batch of fruit.
Yeah, maybe I'll do an inoculation for that thing, but we're 95% wild ferments.
But I do also do mead, which is honey, water, yeast.
So we do that fermentation to do canned.
I think I brought you some last time.
joe rogan
Yes, you did.
maynard james keenan
The canned meads.
joe rogan
We had some at your Osteria.
It was amazing.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's really wild tasting, like different than anything I think I'd ever drank before.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, but that we also were about to can it.
But I actually did a fermentation with the mead where I did one with lavender, One with hibiscus, one with bergamot, and one with star jasmine.
Just to see what that would lend as far as a floral nature in that mead.
We'll see.
We haven't actually canned it yet to see how that went.
joe rogan
You also have like a natural sparkling, like a white wine.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, the pet gnat we call it.
It's an ancient method of letting the wine finish fermentation in a bottle.
So it's kind of like champagne.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
But different.
joe rogan
But more different tasting.
It was kind of more complex.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
I think if you're a champagne person versus like an Italian sparkling, now I'm getting all geeky with people that are wine drinkers, but what we're doing in Arizona is far more like a filtered drink.
Ancient method, Italian sparkling, because it's Malvisia, Bianca, and Chardonnay, 50-50.
So if people are, for people listening, if you're wondering what kind of sparkling I'm doing, that's a pet nat.
It's very much an Italian sparkling approach, rather than a champagne.
joe rogan
The reason why I brought up the Brian Murray Rescue book, because I've always been fascinated, like if that was what wine used to be, that wine was the fermented grapes mixed in with psychedelics and all these other compounds that they're sort of discovering, when did modern, what we think of as wine now, which is like what you make, when did that start?
maynard james keenan
No idea.
Yeah.
It could very well be some kind of way before pre-prohibition kind of stuff in Europe.
I have no idea.
But, you know, I know that there's people that have done like botanicals where they're kind of doing almost like beer, beerish, wine-ish botanical fermentations.
Various, you know, varying results, but I don't know.
I've really researched it.
joe rogan
Did you ever see the documentary Sour Grapes?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Wild shit, right?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
That guy was amazing.
joe rogan
Crazy.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
One of my good friends is in that documentary.
I met that gentleman who got arrested.
I met him at a wine tasting.
maynard james keenan
Me too.
joe rogan
Did you?
maynard james keenan
Me too, yeah.
joe rogan
Really?
maynard james keenan
I was with Peter Gago from Penfolds.
They were doing a whole Penfolds Australian wine dinner at the Australian consulate's house or whatever.
And that guy was sitting right here next to me.
joe rogan
What was his name again?
maynard james keenan
I don't remember his name.
joe rogan
It was right at the tip of my...
It was like an American name.
I met him because my friend is a wine dork.
And he had a birthday party.
So I went to his...
I want to say it's 2003. And we all were sitting around and they would serve this incredible food with flights of wine.
And...
They'd all brought their own wine.
They were popping corks.
Rudy.
maynard james keenan
Rudy.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's out now.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
His, you know, never mind the shady shit he was up to.
That's, you know, that's why he went to prison, buddy.
But his palate and his ability to mimic those things was fucking otherworldly.
He was really good at that.
And his perception of things in that bottle, in that glass, to be able to reproduce that the way he did was exceptional.
joe rogan
Well, that was why I brought it up.
Like, did he reproduce it accurately?
maynard james keenan
Enough.
Enough to fool complex palates.
Just enough.
Because, you know, there's bottle variation on things.
So it could be like, oh, this one doesn't quite taste like the ones I've had before.
joe rogan
Right.
Right.
And that could be expressed in legitimate bottles.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
But from 2000 what to 2000 this and different climate, different weather was different that year.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
The funny part was like people that were totally duped.
Yeah.
What?
unidentified
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
No, mine are cool.
I'm not a dupe.
joe rogan
Well, what's funny, the people who are self-professed wine experts was like, this one's real.
And then another guy would come along and go, this is garbage.
I'm like, well, how can there be such a varying opinion amongst people that are actually...
maynard james keenan
There's always been that kind of like, you know, you can't taste how expensive a wine is.
Well, no, of course you can't taste how expensive a wine is.
But there are guys who are really good at identifying right down to the year and the producer by what they're tasting in a glass.
And it's like, I think it's fucking, it's voodoo.
It's incredible how they can do that.
They can narrow it down.
And that's, of course, from an established region that has a history that you can kind of track it to a point through time, and having maybe had that wine.
And they have that fucking lockbox.
They can log that shit away, and it's like a steel trap of recollection of those things.
Those guys are incredible.
joe rogan
Yeah, I've talked to sommeliers that claim to be able to do that, and I've tried to Get it from them.
Like, what are you doing?
Like, how are you doing that?
Like, what is it about a want?
Like, you can drink it and say...
maynard james keenan
There's a checklist that they go through.
It's a very rigorous drilling of a checklist of things that they identify.
The first thing they identify, the second thing they identify.
And it's not, you know, it's more like, okay, when I walk into, when I pull into your parking lot, is this a house?
Or is this an industrial complex?
Or is this a barn?
Or is this an airport?
Well...
It's an additional complex.
Okay, now, is there parking?
Yes, there's parking.
Okay, when we walk in, is it, you know, so you're going through this checklist of just super general shit down to very specific things.
joe rogan
Have you tried to learn that?
maynard james keenan
Fuck no, man.
I got way too much shit in my head to deal with that shit.
joe rogan
But I would imagine, like, in...
Making wine, like you do.
You have to have some sort of a palate.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, but you know, at the same time, I don't have to sound like Led Zeppelin, I just have to sound like me.
So I'm only expressing, these grapes are going to tell me what they're going to do, and I'm going to try to get out of the way to make sure that these grapes grow from grapes to wine.
And I'm going to do everything that I know how to do to get out of the way to make sure that thing is that thing.
Now, me describing that thing to you like a psalm describes it, I can't do that for you.
But I can get out of the way to make it get to the thing that you can describe.
That's your job.
joe rogan
But when you decided to do this in 2000, you must have had some sort of an esoteric appreciation.
maynard james keenan
Yes, 100%.
I just couldn't describe that to you and I couldn't map out what year was what wine.
I could just tell you that everything about this wine is inspirational in some way.
Whether it's like the age on it, the acid structure, something, all the pistons were firing in terms of like...
All the sensory alarms that are going off in my mouth, the length of the experience, like how it's changing in the glass.
Yeah, that was very inspiring to me.
As far as actually being able to map that out for you, I'm an idiot.
I couldn't do it.
joe rogan
Did you go through any sort of education in terms of what is involved in the creation of a wine that you appreciate?
maynard james keenan
I just thought time in cellar, spending time in Adelaide Hills at Penfolds for a very short amount of time.
Seeing it happening around the world, going to wineries while on tour, while they're trying to time it where I can go when they're going to actually harvest today to see, what's the equipment they're using?
What are you doing?
Like, how are you doing this thing?
joe rogan
Like, when did that spark get ignited?
Like, what?
unidentified
99. So it was like right before you started?
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
So before that, were you a wine connoisseur?
Were you a wine appreciator?
maynard james keenan
I started appreciating wine maybe around 96. Really?
Yeah.
joe rogan
So just a few years later, you own a vineyard?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, it just resonated.
Whatever it was, it just clicked.
It's like, you know, going back to, I was talking to Donald today, like he walked into Hickson's place on Pico back in the day.
Henry Ankins walked in the same week that I walked in to Hickson's Academy back in 95. Henry Akins is one of the best black belts I've ever met.
I can barely tie my belt.
joe rogan
It resonated with him.
maynard james keenan
It resonated with him.
It made sense to him.
It clicked and it went.
And there's no way you can figure out what that is to make him what he is.
I was not that guy.
I had to work harder on it.
Wine?
It was like I'd been doing it my whole life.
joe rogan
Almost instantly?
maynard james keenan
It made sense.
And then slowly backing up and understanding the chemistry of it, working with people to go action-reaction and logging that in to develop that constantly.
But the process, just the basic logistics of making wine made sense to me almost instantaneously.
joe rogan
And this was from 96?
maynard james keenan
No, my first wine that I actually was involved in making was 2004. Oh.
joe rogan
But in 96, when you first started getting interested in it, you went to a vineyard?
maynard james keenan
It was just dinners.
You start to all of a sudden went from a dude who grew up in a lower middle class family with parents at a teacher budget, cutting wood for the winter, to being on tour with a band and all of a sudden I can afford a bottle of wine that was more than $50.
You know, going, oh, this is cool.
Seeing all the agents and the lawyers and the fucking promoter and the manager and the fucking accountant all backstage having a nice glass of wine while I'm drinking Bud Light over here.
Going, what the fuck's that?
And I want to know.
And I grabbed a glass and tried it and went, this is a new thing.
This is something I want to know about.
joe rogan
And when was the first time you actually went to a...
Do you remember the first vineyard you visited while they were doing all that?
maynard james keenan
Um...
I wanna say it was like 97...
I think.
98?
It was, um...
Pegasus Bay in New Zealand.
joe rogan
In New Zealand?
maynard james keenan
Watching the process, watching...
No, I think they were doing Saint Blanc, I think.
It might have been Pinot.
I think it was Pinot.
But they were de-stemming, and I was watching the stemming process going, okay, okay.
Machine.
I can afford a machine.
joe rogan
And you just thought, one day I'm going to do that.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
And then the wheels started getting into motion.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
unidentified
Wow.
Wow.
joe rogan
How many people around you are going, Maynard, what the fuck are you doing?
maynard james keenan
All of them?
All.
unidentified
It just seems like such a fucking intensive...
joe rogan
Complicated endeavor.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
But it's rewarding.
It's work.
You're grounding.
There's setup.
There's cleanup.
There's logistics.
Tim and I are like the logistics Nazis.
There's a way to do it to not get in your own way to understand the 16 steps.
Like today, dealing with that triangle, I kept getting my foot caught up and trying to get the leg around the head because I was getting in my own way.
I didn't shift enough to make it so that I wasn't in my own way.
In the cellar, I'm not in my own way.
I'm thinking five steps ahead, and I'm not going to put a thing down in the way that I have to move and add six steps to getting to the next step.
joe rogan
And this is a thing that you get better at?
maynard james keenan
I get better at with every harvest, but I was already naturally inclined that way as far as logistic.
Tetris is my thing.
joe rogan
Hmm.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
That's wild because there's nothing like that in my mind that I'm fascinated by, that I would want to go and start developing a company that makes these things.
It seems like it's just so rare that something like a light bulb goes off and you're like, I need a wine press.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Wow.
So when you, like, crack open a bottle of wine today, do you ever open one and go, I should have waited?
maynard james keenan
I mean, yeah, there's those instances.
Or I open up some of my stuff from before and go, yeah, I fucked that up.
This is a good bottle.
It's okay.
But I know that I could have done better on this bottle.
joe rogan
And what would you have done to do better?
maynard james keenan
Well, it depends on the grade.
It depends on what I did.
And it depends on the thing.
But, you know, there's adjustments that I've made over the years that have made it so that there's a higher percentage of success for that year.
joe rogan
What are those variables?
maynard james keenan
It all depends on the grape, depends on how we picked it, depends on what it did.
Is it too much oak?
Is it not enough oak?
joe rogan
Oak in the casket?
maynard james keenan
When you're putting stuff in barrels, is it too new?
Is there too much flavor?
Am I imparting too much flavor on the wine?
Going back and tasting some of the stuff I earlier did, it's because they were new.
I just bought the barrels.
So there's a lot of oak on some of the earlier wines that I did.
It's not there now because now their older barrels are no longer imparting that flavor of oak.
In hindsight, I can't change it.
It's done.
But I might have...
joe rogan
Aged the barrels?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
Get a couple new, but buy some neutral ones from somebody instead, so that there was just a kiss of oak on it rather than a lot of new oak.
joe rogan
So this is a company that specializes in creating barrels?
maynard james keenan
No, you just go to some of the other wineries that are cycling through some of their barrels and you can buy used barrels from reputable wineries.
joe rogan
I was going to ask you next, do you reuse your barrels?
maynard james keenan
I use as much as I possibly can because I don't necessarily want the oak influence on the wine.
joe rogan
Does the wine that was in the barrel influence future wines?
maynard james keenan
No, you're rinsing it out pretty good.
You're cleaning them out.
joe rogan
What do you clean it with?
maynard james keenan
Steam.
joe rogan
So there's no chemicals, no nothing, just water?
maynard james keenan
Steam and water, yeah.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
How the fuck do you have time for all this?
I just don't understand this.
maynard james keenan
Logistical time management.
joe rogan
I understand, but I don't understand where it's coming from.
I'm looking at a clock.
I'm going, okay, this goes around.
There's 12 of those, and then there's another 12. Like, where the fuck is the time?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, organizational skills.
joe rogan
Do you ever anticipate doing anything else with this sort of...
The amount that's involved?
maynard james keenan
No, I think because when it comes to...
Tim and I are probably going to develop a gin, but that will be 100% us just coming up with a label, coming up with a concept, coming up with maybe a recipe, and then handing that to some...
joe rogan
I don't even know what gin is.
I know it's an alcohol.
I have no idea what you make it out of.
maynard james keenan
Well, depending on the gin, it can be grain-based, but I'm probably going to go more for a molasses-based spirit.
joe rogan
Molasses?
maynard james keenan
You ferment the molasses to give you the spirit.
joe rogan
Is that a common thing for gin?
maynard james keenan
Some of my favorite ones are.
A lot of it ends up being more the grain, you know, grain-based, but there's also people that have done honey.
joe rogan
Honey gin?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
So what gin is, like, when you're saying gin, I know it's an alcohol.
maynard james keenan
Juniper is the key ingredient to it.
To make it a gin, juniper is one of the botanicals that comes into either during the distillation process or post-distillation, juniper is involved.
But you can also do other things and other botanicals and things to make it a more unique gin.
joe rogan
Now, what about tequila?
maynard james keenan
Tequila is agave, but I don't know the process on tequila that much.
I'd like to know, but I think gin is going to be more accessible to me because just the process of over-farming and tearing up land, if I can put in agave, I don't know what that sounds like.
unidentified
Over-farming?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I've heard rumors of just fucking tearing through Mexico and fucking up entire landscapes to deal with the agave thing.
It's a controversial subject.
joe rogan
Oh, really?
maynard james keenan
I think so.
joe rogan
What I was reading about...
maynard james keenan
I'm trying to hurt it and I was like, I don't want to hear about it right now.
I got other shit to think about.
joe rogan
I was reading about the health aspects of tequila.
That tequila actually has a probiotic benefit to it and that it has less sugar in it.
So people find it to be more healthy than drinking other forms of alcohol.
maynard james keenan
Maybe.
I mean, you know, I suppose me not having five of those one night is probably not the smartest thing.
Yeah.
Waking up the next day going, not feeling very probiotic.
joe rogan
Right.
maynard james keenan
But, you know, if you exercise restraint, which I'm not sure I know that word, but, yeah, restraint.
joe rogan
Do you do anything to recover from hangovers specifically?
Do you have sort of a routine?
maynard james keenan
Water.
Just a lot of water.
The sauna.
There's some stuff you'll drink.
Electrolytes.
Electrolytes.
I do the old school British Baraka if I have to.
joe rogan
What's that?
maynard james keenan
It's like a fizzy, like vitamin C, multivitamin fizzy thing you drink with water.
It dissolves in the water.
joe rogan
So it's just a vitamin sort of...
maynard james keenan
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, we have some.
maynard james keenan
There it is.
joe rogan
Does that work?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
Well, I mean, the best thing for a hangover is drinking heavily the night before.
Then you'll for sure get a hangover.
If you want to avoid the hangover, don't drink heavily the night before.
joe rogan
It just is what it is.
maynard james keenan
It just is what it is.
So, you know, just exercise restraint and drink a lot of water when you're drinking.
Like, if I'm going to have the tequilas, I have to force myself to be double-fisted.
joe rogan
Mm-hmm.
maynard james keenan
Water in one hand, drink in the other, so that way I'm hydrating as I'm drinking.
joe rogan
Right.
maynard james keenan
Because a lot of it's the dehydration that's fucking with you.
So that's why the electrolytes in the next morning help.
And just, you know, pounding water.
joe rogan
During the process.
maynard james keenan
During the process and the next day.
joe rogan
Resign yourself to the fact you're going to pee a lot.
maynard james keenan
Yes.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
Yes.
joe rogan
Do you have a hard time keeping up with the demand?
Because I would imagine you can only grow so much wine.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, we're doing great with respect to that.
We're at the balance of what we can produce and what we sell.
It's a nice spot to be in.
joe rogan
But do you feel pressure to expand?
maynard james keenan
We want to expand because a healthy wine region has a healthy bulk wine market.
So if I can make wine out of all those grapes, but I only need 80% of it, I sell my 20% of juice to other winemakers just so they can supplement their programs.
That's a healthy winemaking environment.
You're familiar with the wine The Prisoner?
joe rogan
No.
maynard james keenan
You know The Prisoner?
joe rogan
Oh, the one that has the mug shots on it?
maynard james keenan
No, it's got a guy in chains.
It's a very popular bottle of wine called The Prisoner.
For the most part, that was all bulk wine.
That's a California project that took off, that made fucking distributors and people a shitload of money because the person was just basically going around initially to just get bulk wine from all these different houses that had bulk wine that put a cool blend together, and it was priced perfectly, and wholesalers made a shitload of money on that thing because it hit.
But it was bulk wine.
It wasn't some weirdo like me in a cellar making wine.
unidentified
Hmm.
joe rogan
So that's a person that doesn't actually even own a vineyard?
They're just getting...
maynard james keenan
There's a lot of that.
Like in California, there's people that don't own a vineyard, don't even own a winery.
They're just putting together in a house.
They're producing a blend of wine from bulk wines and presenting you a bottle.
Which is totally fine because it's...
As long as it's labeled properly, that's a California red wine.
Okay, that's fine.
joe rogan
How do they even know what it's going to taste like?
maynard james keenan
They're putting together, because they're only buying it if it goes with the blend.
So they're getting samples, samples, samples, blending, and then picking the samples, the blend, and buying that wine in bulk and putting it together.
joe rogan
Is this the most you've ever talked about wine in the two and a half hour period?
maynard james keenan
No.
I can go.
I can go for a long time.
I can bore the fuck.
I can put you all to sleep.
joe rogan
No, it's fascinating.
I'm fascinated by it.
I'm fascinated by anything that anybody is deeply interested in.
And it's clear that you're deeply interested in this.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, so to answer your question, I wouldn't mind expanding the vineyard so that I have flexibility because what happens if I get hail and it takes out half my vineyards?
If I have way more vineyards than I need, then I can kind of, in that year, I can kind of massage what I have Maybe use bulk wine from the year before to supplement into a blend.
But if I've made all the grapes from the vineyard we didn't get, whether that wine is always valuable to somebody else to sell as a bulk product.
joe rogan
Hale can take out half of your product?
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
maynard james keenan
It fucking...
It sucks.
joe rogan
Is there a way you can mitigate that?
Put tarps over it or something?
maynard james keenan
Hail netting, yeah.
unidentified
Hail netting.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, so it looks like bird netting, but it's hail net.
So it serves two purposes.
It combats the hail and birds.
unidentified
Jesus Christ.
maynard james keenan
It's expensive and looks weird.
joe rogan
There it is.
Hail.
maynard james keenan
Yep.
unidentified
Fuck.
maynard james keenan
Look at that.
joe rogan
And that just destroys everything.
maynard james keenan
Well, those vines are probably, if they're not dead completely, they're definitely not getting any grapes off those vines for the next three years.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
And it could very well be that those vines are done.
Done, done.
joe rogan
I'm just overwhelmed by the amount of commitment that's involved in this.
I start thinking about my own head, like how I would handle this.
I'm like, I just...
I couldn't.
maynard james keenan
Tequila.
joe rogan
Something.
maynard james keenan
Hey, we got hail.
unidentified
Fuck.
joe rogan
Listen, man, you balance it out.
I don't know how you do it.
I think we kind of got a better perspective on what's involved through this conversation, but I don't know how you do it.
It's a lot.
maynard james keenan
Well, I don't do it by myself.
You have to delegate and you have to trust people.
joe rogan
If somebody wants to buy your wine, what's the best retail outlet?
maynard james keenan
Caduceus.org is our website.
You can go buy it off of Caduceus.org.
We ship to most states.
We're only in distribution in maybe 12 or 14 states.
You couldn't get it at a grocery store unless we're actually in that state.
Texas, we're in stores here in Texas, Colorado, Arizona, California.
But the best way to get it is just to order it offline.
joe rogan
All right, that's what I'm going to do.
maynard james keenan
And if you want to review, you have to ask Drew Dober because I just sent him some wine.
joe rogan
Oh, really?
You sent some to Drew?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I love that dude.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, we had a bet.
In his last fight, I said, if you win the fight, I'll send you wine.
If you lose the fight, you have to wear a shirt in public.
joe rogan
A Caduceus shirt?
maynard james keenan
Any shirt.
unidentified
Any shirt.
maynard james keenan
Just any fucking shirt.
joe rogan
Well, if I was Bill I Kim, I wouldn't wear shirts in public either.
maynard james keenan
No shit.
unidentified
I'm so jealous of this fucking...
joe rogan
That was the Terrence McKinney fight, right?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
That was a wild fight.
maynard james keenan
It was a good fight.
joe rogan
That was a crazy one.
That Terrence McKinney is wild.
maynard james keenan
Did you see the Sugar Sean fight?
joe rogan
Yes, I did.
maynard james keenan
The look on his face at the end, I was like, he normally runs his mouth pretty good as a good old Arizona boy, but he had that look on his face like, Did I win that?
Did I win?
joe rogan
Well, he was very honest.
He said, I'm gonna have to watch this afterwards to see if I actually won it.
A lot of people were shocked.
There's a video of Khabib watching the decision.
And Khabib's like, how?
How?
How did he win?
How?
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I was right there 50. I wasn't sure because I thought the other guy won.
But I think the bigger takeaway is that...
He was in it.
joe rogan
He was certainly in it against Piotr Jan.
He was a former champion, one of the best in the division by far, the number one contender.
It was a very close fight.
And he definitely hurt Piotr in multiple occasions.
Caught him with that big knee, rocked him.
The question is, how much is the takedown worth?
How much is control worth?
maynard james keenan
Right.
I assume that when I saw all the takedowns, then Jan won.
Because there's a lot of takedowns.
joe rogan
Yeah, but takedowns without damage.
It's like, what is that value?
I mean, and I'm not denying that I thought Piotr Jan won, because I did think he won at the end of it.
But takedowns without damage versus stand-up with damage.
Because Sugar landed more strikes standing and had big moments.
Jan had some big moments, too.
One big left hand that rocked him.
The question is, like...
How much is...
How valuable are those takedowns?
And how valuable is that top game and that control?
maynard james keenan
And that's way out of my, you know...
joe rogan
The problem...
There's several problems.
But one of the problems is that I feel, and I've said this ad nauseam, that I feel that we're very limited by this 10-9 This 10-point must-scoring system.
Because someone can win a round 10-9 and it can be a very close round.
And someone can win a round clearly and it can be 10-9.
And that doesn't make any sense to me.
And I feel like the system is designed for boxing and it's a good system for boxing.
I don't think it's a good system for MMA. I think MMA needs a much more comprehensive system.
Like, if a guy can hold you down with no damage at all for three minutes, versus a guy who holds you down and damages you for 30 seconds, what's worth more?
You know, what hits you with three or four good hard shots, is that worth more?
Or is, like, the predominance of a round, like, if you spend the majority of a round on top of a guy, even if you're not damaging him, how much is that worth?
How much is a leg kick worth?
How much is a submission worth?
Like, a submission attempt?
I think we need a much more comprehensive system.
It's not a 10-point must.
I don't think that's the right system for MMA. I think it should be a completely different system.
We just sort of adopted the boxing system.
So the first round of Aljamain Sterling and TJ Dillashaw, that is a fucking dominant round.
Like, what is that?
Is it a 10-7?
Is it a 10-6?
I mean, that's an all-Algermaine round.
He beat the shit out of TJ Dillashaw.
Took him down, dominated him, took his back, beat the fuck out of him.
Like, what's that?
How do you score that round?
And, you know, how could...
How could that be better scored with a better system?
I think there's definitely room.
maynard james keenan
I feel like that UFC was probably my top five UFCs ever.
joe rogan
It was amazing.
We watched it.
Jamie hooked it up from my iPad to a television through an HDMI connection in the O2 Arena.
We're in London.
We just did the show.
We had no idea what happened, luckily.
We got off stage, ordered food, and Jamie set up the iPad to a big screen TV that was in the room.
We were all in there.
There was like 20 of us in there watching.
maynard james keenan
It was fucking incredible.
joe rogan
It was incredible.
maynard james keenan
He'll sue you.
joe rogan
No, he wanted me to.
unidentified
He gave me the link to it.
joe rogan
I have a Fight Pass membership.
But that's how we watched it.
But it was such a good fight.
And then watching Islam and Charles Oliveira, that was what a fight that was.
Islam Makhachev must have the most incredible squeeze.
His squeeze must be out of this world.
Because you see how quick Charles tapped once he clamped that on him.
I mean, poof!
maynard james keenan
He had all the points covered, and he just, like, I've been done.
joe rogan
That dude is on another level.
I mean, he is the truth.
I was always impressed with him, but, I mean, I was saying, leading up to him getting a shot at the world title, he's the boogeyman of that division.
He was the guy that everybody was saying, like, is the most dominant of all the contenders.
And then when he tapped Dober, that was a big one.
When he tapped Dan Hooker, that was a big one, too.
It's like the way he's tapping these guys who are these world-class fighters.
He's just fucking running through them.
But the fact that he got on Oliveira and mounted him and then submitted him with an arm triangle, head and arm choke like that.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, that's a statement.
joe rogan
He submitted the guy with the most submissions in the history of the sport.
And the way he did it was just, he was so fucking methodical and dominant.
And Oliveira tested him.
I mean, he got out of bad positions in the first round, got back up to his feet.
Hit him with some good shots, but Makachev, he's the fucking truth.
Interesting that he's going to fight Volkanovski next.
That's kind of a crazy thing for Volkanovski to go right up to 55 from 45. Yeah.
I don't know.
I'm interested in that, because Volkanovski is fucking amazing.
The fights with Holloway, especially the last fight with Holloway, we see the evolution of his game, and he's gotten so much better.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, it's interesting.
joe rogan
Don't you have an iPad on stage with you sometimes?
maynard james keenan
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
While you're playing or watching the fights?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
Because I want to know.
Of course, it's fighter-specific.
There's people that I definitely pay attention to more than other fighters just because I want to see what happens because, you know...
I back these people's career.
I just want to know what's going to go on.
I don't watch every UFC in that context, but if I know Thug Rose is fighting, I'll iPad on the stage.
I've got to see.
Nate Diaz, I'm going to have the iPad up there for sure.
No joke.
joe rogan
I think that's hilarious.
You're in the middle of a fucking wild concert and you've got an iPad sitting on the stage.
maynard james keenan
I know, it's awful.
joe rogan
No, it's not awful.
maynard james keenan
They do it like, come on, we're here to watch this, you know, watch the show.
I go, so you get an extra show.
You get a thing that's like, not just us doing our thing.
I'm going to deliver what I'm going to deliver.
I'm not going to not sing the song, but I'm going to run over here and you should be laughing at the fact that I have this weird fucking obsession with UFC for your show.
joe rogan
Do the people know?
maynard james keenan
No, not mostly.
joe rogan
They know now.
maynard james keenan
They know now.
What's that weird glow?
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
Why does he keep looking down there where that speaker is?
maynard james keenan
Is he got a teleprompter?
joe rogan
Oh, no!
Get up, get up, get up, get up!
Have you ever had a moment where something shocking happens and you react?
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can't remember the fight, but I have the video somewhere.
I'll send it to you.
unidentified
Backstage.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Do you ever get a chance to go see many of them live?
maynard james keenan
UFCs?
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
Only when it's like maybe Arizona.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Have you been to some of the ones?
Did you go to the one with where Olivera fought?
Who did he fight?
Where he won?
Justin Gaethje?
maynard james keenan
I missed that.
I think I was out of town for that one.
The one I saw was I was screaming like a Fucking idiot, man.
That was front row.
And it was when Diaz caught Sterling.
Is that Sterling?
No.
He didn't win.
He got him down and he started a showboat.
joe rogan
Oh, Leon Edwards.
maynard james keenan
Edwards.
I'm like, dude, finish the fucking fight.
I'm like, I'm on my feet screaming my fucking head off.
Finish it!
Because, you know, and he didn't.
joe rogan
Well, easier said than done.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I know.
But I was like, you know, armchair fucking dude down on the ground.
I was just so excited for him that he caught him.
unidentified
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
And he was down for a second.
joe rogan
We should go to one live.
maynard james keenan
It was in my mind.
joe rogan
Let's go to one live when I'm not working.
maynard james keenan
Okay.
joe rogan
We should come see one at the Apex Center.
maynard james keenan
The Apex Center's great.
joe rogan
It's the best.
We went to...
We did a combat sports trifecta.
We saw Abu Dhabi.
We saw Gordon Ryan compete in Abu Dhabi.
Then we went to the UFC and saw Corey Sanhagen and Yong Sedong at the Apex Center.
And then we went to see Canelo Alvarez versus Triple G in a boxing fight.
It was an incredible day.
maynard james keenan
How do you think Silva's gonna do?
joe rogan
Against Jake Paul?
Well, it's interesting.
Jake Paul is a big, heavy-handed, young guy.
And if Jake Paul was just a boxer and not a YouTuber, I think people would take him very seriously.
maynard james keenan
Right.
joe rogan
And I think people, for whatever reason, think that he's— I think you have to take him seriously.
You have to take him very seriously.
He knocked out Tyron Woodley with one punch.
He's legit as fuck.
Anderson Silva is one of the greatest combat sports athletes of all time, one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time.
And as a boxer, even though he's 47 years old, he did beat Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., who was a legitimate former world champion, and he knocked out Tito Ortiz to show you that he's got power.
Obviously Tito's not a boxer.
I'm curious.
I'm curious.
I don't know what's going to happen.
47 is old.
maynard james keenan
Because for me, there's the UFC and then there's Anderson Silva.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
So I'm very precious about Anderson as a fan.
joe rogan
Well, I was very fortunate to be able to commentate against while, excuse me, when Anderson was competing in his prime against the best in the world.
When Anderson was in his prime, he was a magician.
He was spectacular.
To see him fight in his prime, like when he knocked out Vitor with that front kick to the face, when Anderson beat Chael Sonnen with a triangle in the last round, a fight that he was losing, when he just beat the shit out of him in the rematch, Anderson during his prime was something extraordinary.
He really...
People forget because you see him towards the decline after he got his leg broken by Chris Weidman in that fight.
He was never really the same again.
But if you remember...
You should look at a fighter in terms of what they were when they were at their best.
And Anderson, at his best, was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of all time.
He was amazing.
He was fucking amazing when he was in his prime.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, I had friends that would watch the fights with me, and they're going, what is he doing?
Like, he's not doing anything.
The first time I go, he is testing every single fucking boundary right now to figure out what he's going to do in the second round.
joe rogan
He's downloading data.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, downloading data.
I'm going to go like this, see what he does.
joe rogan
He was extraordinary.
maynard james keenan
And then second round, boink.
joe rogan
I was a fan of his before he ever got to the UFC. And I remember there was a betting line when he was fighting Chris Lieben.
And I was like, whatever the betting line is, put the fucking house on the Brazilian.
I'm like, you have to understand what you're about to see.
Like, this guy is on many different levels.
And he was in his prime.
Because I was watching him compete.
He was initially competing in Japan.
And then he started competing in London, in England.
Was it Cage Rage, I think it was called?
That promotion was when he came into his own.
That's when he fought Lee Murray.
That's when he fought George Oliveira.
He was in his prime then.
And that's when he came to the UFC right after that.
I'm like, when he fought Tony Fricklin and he hit him with this preposterous upward elbow.
He was so good.
And I was like, we're getting Anderson when he came into his own, and that's when he entered into the UFC. So people got to see this just perfect striker.
He was so good.
But he's 47. When I'm looking at this fight coming up, I'm like, hmm, I don't know.
He's also 47, and I don't know what kind of testing they're doing.
That changes everything.
That changes the whole world.
Because if he's on all sorts of Mexican supplements, then we could see a turning back of the clock.
maynard james keenan
Extra mustache?
joe rogan
Yes.
Could have an extra mustache.
He's most likely going to be supplementing.
I wouldn't imagine he's not.
At 47, I wouldn't imagine he's not taking something.
If you're taking something in your 47, that is not what we think of as 47. That is 47 with a body that responds like a 30-year-old.
Is that the case?
I don't know.
Is that enough?
I don't know.
I'm interested.
I'm in.
I'm gonna watch it.
I'm definitely gonna get it.
You know?
maynard james keenan
Even if it's on stage.
joe rogan
Yeah.
maynard james keenan
Right over here.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I didn't do that.
I couldn't do that.
With comedy, I can't do that.
maynard james keenan
True.
joe rogan
I can't.
But afterwards, I'm like, I just got to stay away from my phone and get to the iPad and watch it.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
But it's an amazing time to be a fan of combat sports.
There's so much going on.
maynard james keenan
I agree.
Yeah, almost too much.
joe rogan
Well, yeah.
maynard james keenan
I love that the ADCC has gone to the level that it's gone.
joe rogan
Yeah, we saw that Thomas& Mack was sold out.
12,000 people in Vegas.
The arena was packed to the gills and it was nuts.
The energy in the place was incredible.
And to be there, like, to have it this popular, it's not a coincidence that it's this popular while Gordon Ryan is at his peak, who is the greatest jiu-jitsu athlete of all time, at 27 years old, which is so crazy to say.
maynard james keenan
He looks amazing.
joe rogan
And I talked to John before you got there today, and John and I were talking, and he's like, he's not even in his prime.
He's like, he's not even at 100%.
He's still getting over his stomach issues.
He's like, but Gordon Ryan at 70% destroys everybody.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
And he's getting better.
maynard james keenan
It was impressive to see because most of the things that he was doing were very simple, methodical, cutting off all your fucking exits and trapping you into a thing.
Nothing fancy.
Just...
This.
Now this is mine.
Now this is mine.
And you're done.
joe rogan
We were talking to him before the finals.
We were hanging out outside.
And when he was fighting Nicky Rod in the finals, he said, I'm just going to give him my leg.
Because the only way he can win is in a wrestling match.
He goes, I'm just going to give him my leg and make him do jiu-jitsu with me.
And so he walks out there and he just kind of gives him his leg.
Nicky grabs him, takes him down.
Gordon grabs ahold of his leg, laces it up, taps.
And I'm like, holy shit!
Like, that's exactly how he called it.
I mean, he was so calm in the way he described it.
I'm just gonna give him my leg.
He did it.
Have you been to an Abu Dhabi live?
Two years from now, let's go.
I think they're going to do it again in Vegas.
If that's the case, let's go.
It'll be worth it.
It's pretty fucking amazing.
And it's pretty amazing as a jiu-jitsu lover to be able to see jiu-jitsu get the attention that it deserves and to see this fucking rabid fan base.
Because basically everyone in the audience trains.
So there's like 12,000 people who are jiu-jitsu trainers and fans and practitioners that are there enjoying that.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Alright, we got a date.
maynard james keenan
Alright.
joe rogan
Two years from now.
maynard james keenan
Yes.
joe rogan
Maynard, you're the fucking man.
maynard james keenan
Thank you, sir.
joe rogan
Thank you very much.
Give people information on all the stuff that we talked about earlier for everything you got going on, the pay-per-views.
maynard james keenan
Yeah.
Pusserfortv.com.
joe rogan
There it is.
And the tour dates.
maynard james keenan
Yeah, we're still going, man.
This is going to be all the way up to Thanksgiving.
joe rogan
There it is.
Pussiver.com forward slash tour.
unidentified
Yep.
joe rogan
Alright, brother.
Thank you very much.
maynard james keenan
Thank you.
Export Selection