Oliver Anthony, whose real name is Christopher Lunsford, discusses his viral music career—starting in May 2023 with raw songs like Rich Man’s Goal recorded on an Android phone—rooted in Appalachian struggles against corporate welfare and government neglect. His spiritual awakening, inspired by Scripture (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes) after years of anxiety, depression linked to a 20-year-old head injury, and substance use, led him to quit drinking, weed, and anger, embracing purpose over ego. Rogan connects his trauma to TBI research while exploring Hancock’s theory of an ancient lost civilization, warning emotionality could fuel modern self-destruction. Anthony defends freedom of speech amid political polarization and tech threats like AI disinformation, stressing personal agency over systemic fixes. His hit Richmond North of Richmond—misunderstood as right-wing—exposes class divides, proving authenticity trumps labels in an era drowning in algorithmic remakes. [Automatically generated summary]
I don't know, I think we talked about this once before, but it's worthless to me.
It's got 325,000 miles on it and a salvage title, and I still daily drive it, but I thought, man, if I could sell this and somebody pay 50 grand for it or whatever and send it towards a charity, it would be pretty slick to do.
Or if someone is listening to this and they want to do something cool and they've got the cheddar, buy it from you and then send it to Roadster Shop and have them put, like, a badass suspension...
Sort of, but back then I don't even think they had data they were going on.
They were going on past success.
So if you go to the 1980s, some of the worst movies that were ever made, like the cocaine years, I really strongly feel like those people were going on reputations of sales, and the studio would put a lot of money behind someone who had a great reputation, and this guy's fucking partying and doing lines and writing crazy shit in these scripts, and some of them are good and some of them aren't so good, but they're all kind of clunky.
They're all kind of disconnected.
That like a true masterpiece of a movie isn't.
You know, like Taxi Driver.
Like you go back and watch Taxi Driver.
That's a masterpiece of a movie.
It's so connected.
You're connected to all the action.
It's like you're on the edge of your seat.
It's wild.
The acting's insane.
Even Jodie Foster as a kid is insane in it.
It's so good.
But cocaine movies in the 80s?
They were nuts, man.
They didn't go on algorithms.
I think they just went on what they thought people wanted.
They probably took polls, but who the fuck's answering polls?
Polls are the worst way to get information because you're only getting information from people dumb enough to answer polls.
That's such a small group of people.
How many people answer polls when they call you up?
How many fucking people would the life have time for a poll?
You know, do you think Jordan Peterson has ever answered a poll?
Yeah, it's fascinating to see throughout history times when people were able to really connect with other humans, whether it's through movie or film or cars or whatever.
Maybe it was the psychedelics or whatever, I don't know, but there was a huge disconnect, it seemed like.
After the 70s with all that, things kind of went off.
And it's interesting even now, like I see a lot of the new movies coming out, they're all just sort of remakes of...
They're like a reconceptualization of something that's happened 15 years ago.
There's not a lot of new stuff out there for people to connect with.
Yeah, Matt Damon did this conversation about why it's so much more difficult to make movies now, there's no DVD sales anymore, and it was very interesting, and it kind of makes sense.
I think it's just, it's really hard to finance those fucking things, and you want a guaranteed success.
What's a guaranteed success?
You need a superhero.
People like superheroes, you know?
And if your superhero's trans, even better.
You can figure out a way to make it.
Every ethnicity inside the group of superheroes that are there, perfect.
Yeah, I think CGI is a blessing and a curse because, like...
I don't know, some of the best film, it doesn't necessarily have the best stunts.
You can tell where some of it's fabricated, but that's okay because you know the whole thing's a fabrication going into it.
It's just about being able to believe the story within it.
That's what's important.
I'm not a huge movie guy, and I guess it's difficult for me to sit three hours and watch something straight.
My mind's already long gone within the first 30 minutes doing something else, but Star Wars was really partial to me growing up.
And I don't think they'll ever touch the original series, even though, yeah, you can tell some of it, even with some of the renovations they've done on the newer versions of it, adding CGI into the old films, it's like just the story of the originals to me meant a lot more than the newer stuff just because of the...
You don't believe it looking at it with your eyes as much, but you believe it more with your mind, like listening to what it has to tell you, you know?
I think that Star Wars is like generational wealth.
Like, the original guy who started the company was a bad motherfucker.
That guy was out there grinding, and he was selling soap out of the back of a wagon in 1890. But the folks who inherited the company three, four, and five generations in...
They're kind of flat.
It's different.
When I watch Star Wars now, it's like a bunch of stuff happening.
It's still fun.
They're still good.
I enjoy them.
But Star Wars won in the context of whatever year it was.
Imagine if you're in a subway and you see that fucking thing turning a corner.
My god that scene was amazing where the poor guy was stuck in the subway And he was running from it and then you see it at the bottom of the escalator stairs.
That's that's like Just those quick glimpses of a thing like that is so much more terrifying than some long CGI'd up monster killing someone scene like the American werewolf in London was just a masterpiece Landis just Nailed it.
Yeah, I haven't kept up with a lot just because, you know, I'm doing...
So anything social media related right now or anything any internet presence I have right now is coming from me off the phone just like before everything blew up so I haven't invested the time to like look at everything circulating but I've people like friends and family have sent me stuff and some of it's pretty funny but you know they've got all these different AI remixes of the song with different voices and overlay different faces and all and it's it's funny to see where it's gonna go you know that is funny Yeah, you're going to have to deal with that.
That's when I realized people are already ripping things off.
And what's crazy is every shirt that I've worn anywhere in public, there's an organization that I'm not officially related to or in any way have done anything with, but it's a friend of a friend in the neighborhood.
It's called Nets with Vets, and they take out...
Veterans with PTSD and let them go deep-sea fishing.
So he asked me last minute just to wear his shirt at one of the concerts.
And do you know now there's like 1,500 listings online for counterfeit Nets with Vets shirts?
And so the organization reached out like, hey, are you like making shirts, ripping us off?
It's like, it's not me.
So it's a weird thing.
I've already experienced a lot of that stuff.
Not so much on the AI side, but just, I don't know, the internet's just such a rowdy place, you know?
It is, and maybe people bring their best and their worst on the internet.
I've always tried to stay off social media as much as possible, but I've learned very quickly that Twitter and Facebook and stuff like you...
You see comments and feedback from people both overwhelmingly positive that maybe you wouldn't get in a personal conversation, but also overwhelmingly negative, too.
People just use that as a vent.
They just take whatever seething hatred they have inside of them.
Well, you're a smart guy and it's representative of how a lot of people feel.
And it's also, there's something about the way certain people sing.
And I don't know what it is because I can't sing.
But there's a tone, there's an authentic sound.
And I know when they're faking it.
And it's not that they're not faking it in a beautiful way.
Like there's a lot of people, the faking is probably a bad term.
But they're sounding perfect and they're singing a song.
There's something missing.
I don't know what it is, but some people, like Janis Joplin's one of my greatest examples.
Take a little piece of my heart, there's an authenticity in that voice God damn, man, if that doesn't bring you to your knees, play that.
Play that.
We need to hear that.
We got time.
This fucking song.
This is one of those songs that every time I hear it, it just takes me, in my mind, to what it must have been like to be alive in 1968, or whenever it was that this came out.
And this hippie chick who's 27 years old has a voice from the heaven.
Yeah, she's really singing with everything in her.
Everything.
Yeah, I think...
At least in my case, I think the one thing that's helped me, too, is that my singing isn't the best, but I've never had any vocal lessons or anything, so the way I sing is just the way I sing.
And so I think even the same way with her and other people, it's maybe rough around the edges, it could be a little pitchy, or you're not using the right part of your face when you project and whatever.
And so on paper, things aren't quite right, but I guess to another human, it sounds right, because it is what it is, you know?
And then the rules almost morph into whatever that is.
It's funny, like, with music.
Yeah, music has...
Country in particular, but music in general has gotten way too wrapped up in like this algorithm of how many beats per minute it needs to have and How many verses and how they need to be layered and it's like they've almost created this sort of like industry standard Like OSHA rule book of how music needs to be performed And so like you can only do that so many thousands of times before people are like, okay, what else is there?
Well, I think it's just for whatever reason, I've been...
I'm the subject matter the last couple weeks, and in everyone's defense, I probably haven't...
I've waited for this opportunity, I guess, to really have a real conversation with somebody about whatever it is I am.
So people are just trying to find, who's this Oliver Anthony guy?
And what is he?
And where does he work?
And who did he vote for?
And what's his family like?
Because they want to sort of build this image of whatever it is that the person behind the song represents, for better or for worse.
The people who agree with it want to...
I don't know.
It's really funny to watch on my end, because obviously I know what's true and what's not, and so just even what I've skimmed through of people sending me, like singing at the Super Bowl, how many people have formed an opinion about whether or not I should be paid to sing at the Super Bowl.
I'm not singing at the Super Bowl.
That's just something somebody made up.
But there's been hundreds of hours of people's time wasted probably talking about I think it's great.
It's wild.
At least everybody can have a good laugh, you know, so.
People, right off the get-go, I guess because it was Radio WV that posted the original video, but I've never once advertised myself as being necessarily from the mountains.
My grandfather grew up in the western part of Virginia in the mountains, but I'm from Farmville, which is technically Piedmont.
But even in...
Throughout rural Virginia, that poverty is a big issue and drugs are a big issue.
I mean, it's not just even in the rural areas.
You go into downtown Richmond or any downtown, anywhere for that matter, it's almost like, yeah, these problems exist everywhere now.
And I think, I mean, obviously they are because that's why the song resonated the way it did.
And it seems like people in power are always fucking with people.
And I think it's a natural inclination that human beings have and I think the Founding Fathers of this country recognized that when they set up our government.
They set up our government to protect it against tyranny.
And they did it by having all these different branches of government and they're all coordinated and there's a lot of fucking, a lot of stuff that keeps people from just running it the way they want to run it like a king.
I mean, I'm certainly no professional historian, but my understanding is that the federal government was never intended to be the size that it is today.
We're very top-heavy in the way we're structured.
Our federal government is enormous and out of control and almost impossible to manage.
But then on our community level and in our state government, especially local government, things are just...
Very neglected and weak and disconnected.
And so, like, that's why you see a lot of the problems.
Like, we shouldn't have to rely on the federal government to fix things out in the street in small-town America.
Like, the communities and the local government should be the ones fixing that.
It's almost impossible for states to be able to have the control to make the right decisions for the people in their areas when the federal government limits them in so many different ways.
Yeah, because it's, I don't know, it does disconnect you from reality in many ways.
And I think a lot of the weird perversion we see coming out, sort of like now at this point you read about, I mean I even reference some of it in the song of course, but you read about a lot of the weird things that people are doing that maybe wouldn't have been accepted a hundred years ago.
I think...
People go down these rabbit holes with porn, and they start off with the video with the milkman, and by the end of it, it's like, where did I end?
Well, that's good if you're watching some freak shit, you know?
If you're into, you know...
It's like, I don't know.
You don't want to give the government the ability to spy on you.
You just don't.
And you don't want to give...
Because the government is just humans.
We like to think of the government as being some all-powerful, all-moral, all-ethical entity that controls us in a perfect and very robust and well-considered way.
But that's not real.
The reality is it's Human beings like you and like me and like Jamie.
People.
People that get to dictate what other people can and can't do.
Like, fortunately, at this point in my life, I haven't been on many medications, but I went on a run with SSRIs, and I can tell you from me, it's like it's...
The last 20 seconds applied more than the first two minutes of the commercial.
Like, I didn't find any benefit in that.
And it's...
Yeah, it's...
I don't know.
I... I think there's alternatives to pharmacy medicine in a lot of cases.
Maybe even if it's just habits.
It's okay to prescribe a medication to keep somebody on course.
For example, I've got a relative of mine.
I won't call him out, but he won't change the way he eats at all.
But he'll take whatever medications every day to keep his his, you know, keep the diabetes away and keep his blood sugar, blood pressure low and all that.
But it's like there should be more integration of like, hey, maybe this is like a plan of what you should do to go along with this medicine.
Ideally, eventually get it's like they don't want you to really get off the medicine, though.
If anything, they want you to keep taking it.
Right.
So like, yeah, it's weird.
It is weird that it's almost advertised like it's a soda or a car or something, you know.
Well, it's weird that, you know, people are so we're so kind of like dependent on other people to take care of us that we would rather go somewhere and get some medication than fix our life, than fix your lifestyle choices.
And that's, and we've been programmed to sort of think that there's solutions for you out there.
Go get those solutions.
That's not a solution, like, internally you need to reconsider, like, what you're doing to your actual physical body.
Like, what are you doing to your physical body?
Like, are you giving your physical body the exercise that it deserves to be robust and healthy?
I know, and that's a lot better than the crap from the store, but even it's not...
I mean, you read about...
I mean, just in the part of the country I'm at, we've got a really close family of ours that farms.
The father and the son have both died from cancer from the commercial agriculture they've been in spraying.
And all that stuff ends up in the food.
I've read about microplastics in the food.
You go and buy a tub of ground beef, how much plastic was in the food of all the bags of crap that they threw in there to feed the animals.
It is...
Really, I think the only way in this time in the area we're in, unless you're going to go buy really expensive food out of some fancy-smanshy grocery store that I can't spell the name of, it's like you're really better off going to somebody local and buying it direct, like buying it almost straight from the farmer.
Yeah, so to me, it's like, yeah, you can definitely eat healthy, but even then, a lot of the food today isn't very healthy, inherently just because of the way it's grown.
Yeah, being complacent is like the worst thing for you.
Physically testing yourself is good and then mentally testing yourself and spending your time working towards some sort of purpose.
Like I think that's really what was...
That's really what was killing me the last few years was just, and I see this in friends and family and people I know, but even just from a mental standpoint, not spending your day working towards whatever purpose it is that you feel like you really need to accomplish deep down inside, I think that will really kill you over a period of time.
Like, you know, you go work your 9 to 5 or whatever, you come home, and then you just Start swiping, start wasting the rest of your evening.
That's your time to be productive, working towards whatever passion project or hobby.
It's not good for you to see that many people die and that many people get bit by crocodiles.
I've seen more people get bit by crocodiles.
I don't know what the fuck is wrong with my algorithm.
But I've seen more people get bit by crocodiles over the last six months than having a long-ass time.
But yeah, it's mostly a waste of time.
But it's also fun.
There's a lot of funny videos on there.
It's just a matter of being disciplined.
You just got to know when you're scrolling too much.
And the way I avoid that is by doing stuff.
So there's a lot of stuff I do, you know, whether it's archery or playing pool.
There's a lot of stuff that I do where I don't, there's no time, you're not spending any time on that.
And so there's a complete different focus.
Like when I'm shooting a bow, when I'm shooting at a target and I'm just practicing, my mind is empty.
All I'm thinking about is the shot process.
All I'm thinking about is whether or not the arrow broke clean.
Did I move my shoulder a little?
Why did that one go three inches left?
Like, what happened there?
Was it my elbow?
Was my elbow up high?
How was my follow-through?
Okay, let's think about it and let's do it again.
So that's like a mind-cleansing thing.
Yoga classes like that.
If you can find a good, hot yoga class...
Man, when you're fucking...
Standing there holding on to one foot and one foot is extended and you're hobbling around on one like, bitch, you ain't thinking about jack shit, but what you're doing.
That is one thing I'm looking forward to now is continuing to focus on mental health and that area, but also I'm excited to get into better shape physically.
The only thing I've done in the last six months at all is running.
We were planning on...
We were planning on trying to schedule a run in September that I think was like 10 miles or something.
So it was a friend of mine that I've been running with two or three days a week.
Whatever's on your mind when you start, it's gone by the time you leave.
It's something good about getting everything connected again.
But music is big for me on that too.
Just getting your...
Playing an instrument and singing like you're just...
Everything's all one again.
It's very easy, especially...
And maybe because of social media and because of the way technology...
I don't know what it is that...
I'm certainly no Dr. Phil, but it's like the world we live in today, your mind is very easily disconnected from your body physically.
You can get lost just worrying and thinking and doing.
It's good to have something like that, I guess, to...
Grounding is the word or whatever.
I don't know.
But it's good to have something like that to get you back into reality again.
My belief is that all human beings need something creative.
Whether that's something creative as a game that you play that you get to invent moves or think about things and strategies or whether that game or whether that creativity expresses itself in music or in drawing, painting, something.
I think people really get a great satisfaction out of making things and of creating things.
All that stuff kind of goes on behind the scenes and you don't really think about it.
One thing that really benefited me...
Even in my early 20s on, a lot of my friends seem to be older.
One of my best friends, I'm 31, he's probably in his mid-40s.
And then everyone above them is like, my best drinking buddy for years, he's like 65, 66. I love hanging out with older people though because they're a lot wiser.
The problem for me was I knew that I needed to do this.
I knew I needed to I procrastinated with music a long time.
I mean, I'm 31. I've been playing guitar and singing on and off since I was a kid.
My grandma was in a band years ago.
I remember as a little kid, what got me interested in all of it was Dukes of Hazzard when I was a kid.
I was like five.
I used to sit with my grandma and we'd sit and watch Dukes of Hazzard and watch Waylon Jennings pick that guitar.
Of course, I had no idea who Waylon Jennings was.
I just fell in love with that.
I grew up listening to that 70s country.
She loved all the old stuff like the 50s and 60s.
Even in the 70s.
Even Janice and all that.
She really introduced me a lot into music when I was a little kid.
I just kind of held on to it.
I never pursued it the way I should.
And then I'd play at a bonfire party or I'd play at whatever.
It's a friend's house.
And everybody's like, man, you got to do something with this.
You don't want to waste this talent you've got and whatever.
And that would almost make me feel even shittier because I'm like, oh, man, I suck.
I'm such a piece of crap for not doing something with this.
So yeah, when I was outside of work, I'd drink, I'd get just absolutely stoned, and I would just sit around and try to think about anything but what it was that I really needed to be doing, which was like...
And so it's kind of like funny, but that's ended up what kind of sparked me into like writing all these songs and doing all this stuff because it's like, I don't know, just like with you probably with what you do, jujitsu or whatever, it's like for me, songwriting is, it gets my head, like you said, getting your head clear, you know, because that's all you can, and songwriting is interesting for different people, but now that I've been in the, I guess now that I've been in the industry for two weeks and I've talked to like, Now that you've been in the industry, you've conquered it.
Now that I'm an industry expert, it's like some of the other musicians I've talked to, like the people I've looked up to over the years, they experience this too.
But certain people, when you songwrite, it's dramatic.
Very early on, yeah, because since my state, I guess it's not even my stage name, it's Oliver Anthony Music, and so it's supposed to represent music from, you know, Oliver Anthony Music is my grandfather, and so he grew up in the 30s in the mountains and used to tell all these wild stories about how life was back then, but the music's just sort of a characterization of, like, that period in time and those people, you know, and that's...
Well, like I said, I just had the YouTube channel listed as Oliver Anthony Music.
Um...
Just because, like, that's sort of the demeanor or the, like I said, the character I was, like, that older Virginia-style music.
Like, if you go on YouTube and you look up that type of music from back then, like, those old recordings of people, like, that's what I, I just love that type of stuff.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of people still call me Chris.
And I've posted on social media, call me whatever.
I mean, I've been called a lot worse than either of those things.
But, yeah, it'll stay Oliver Anthony music indefinitely.
Yeah.
It's a special name, and it's a special name to me, not only because it was my grandfather's name, but it's sort of like, to me, it reminds me of how different things were back then.
But he was born Oliver Anthony, but everybody called him Antony growing up.
And so, like, he always thought his name was Anthony Oliver.
And, uh, last name Engel.
And so, like, it wasn't until he was in his 60s and going to retire, he realized that his name didn't match his birth certificate.
So he had to actually change his legal name when he was in his 60s.
But all the paperwork back then was so scattered up because a lot of people were illiterate.
And of course documents weren't tracked as well as they are now, you know, and so it's like There's people in the family that have a different spelling and it's the same last name But the few letters are different stuff.
It's just kind of cool like but he just he just thought that was crazy He had to change his name and he was 65 so he could draw his retirement because his Social Security and everything was under a totally different name, but I That's crazy.
It's just special to me.
He's like the only other one in the family like me.
Most of our family's average height, six feet and under, but he and I were both 6'6", redheaded, left-handed.
I don't know.
In a lot of ways, I just thought it was special to kind of respect him.
He passed away in 2019, and that's kind of when I... I guess that's when I first kind of adapted the name for the music.
I didn't really get serious with anything until probably...
Yeah, and so that, and, you know, like, anxiety is definitely something that's underestimated.
You know, I used to laugh about, or not laugh about, but I used to just not really understand when people talked about mental health and anxiety, because everyone gets stressed out over stuff, and so you think of anxiety as being just like this normal phenomenon everyone deals with, but...
Your mind can really put you in a dark place to where that thing just holds on to you.
It just makes it very difficult for you to do anything.
So yeah, I spent at least two years of my life almost constantly just having what felt like just a knot right here, just wrenching at me.
Well, that's especially true for people that are pursuing a non-traditional life that doesn't have any guarantees.
It's a wild life to try to be an entertainer.
Just to...
Choose to try to make it in this wild world of people that are singing and Making songs and you want people to pay attention to you Like you know how many fucking people are singing how many people can sing how many people are Recording things and now with YouTube and the like how many people are putting stuff up on the internet for other people to enjoy It's a lot well idea that you're gonna stand out So that you're filled with anxiety just because of that because you're this future is uncertain Yeah,
Always sort of finds Like for people that becomes very successful Especially like yourself.
It's almost like that's the best way to do it Like I've never met anybody where I was like your way to do it isn't the wrong way to do it like I everybody that I meet that becomes successful especially like overnight people it's like oh I see all these fat.
Well, that's why you're good That's very good.
You're good because you had a real life, like a real tortured regular life, like regular people.
If you're in the fucking Mickey Mouse Club when you're 14, and then all of a sudden you're famous.
I mean, I love Miley Cyrus to death, and she's fucking insanely talented.
And I heard her new album is her best ever.
Everybody's raving about it.
But I feel...
Bad for people that become famous when they're young.
I just feel like that's a heavy burden for you to have to carry, and you didn't ask for it.
You can't ask for it.
You don't know what it is.
It's like getting a face tattoo when you're five.
It's like, I want to get a heart tattooed on my forehead.
Let everybody know I'm full of love.
Like, okay, Billy, let's take you to the tattoo park.
Okay, Billy, let's get you in front of TV. Yeah, and it's tough, because then...
Everyone's perception of everything is different anyway based off the way they were brought up.
Like, you know, the way you and I look at something, we both look at something a certain way, and it's our way of looking at it, and to us that's reality, but everyone's perception is just different, just inherently, just based off the way we were raised and maybe even our genetics and the way our...
Things we've experienced are the way our parents taught us things.
And so, like, yeah, it's...
It is tough if you get thrown into that at such an early age.
Because this is just such a...
I feel bad for anybody that gets thrown into all this anyway.
Like, the things I've seen and heard and witnessed and...
This almost crazy sense of urgency everyone's sort of thrown on me to do something with this.
And it's like, I don't...
Yeah, at the end of the day, I've got to remember who I was a month ago, and I've got to make sure that I... And it's okay to evolve from that and change.
I don't want to always be stuck being that guy, but I don't want to leave him behind either.
This is like this conversation that we had over the phone.
I said, fuck all those urgent people.
You have talent.
You have talent.
You don't need anything else but talent.
Talent and authenticity.
You got both of those things.
This urgency thing?
What the fuck are they talking about?
You've literally had the number one song like instantly.
You can't do that again?
How the fuck do you know?
You don't know jack shit.
These people are crazy.
They don't understand what's going on and they don't understand what it's like to be famous.
You are in a weird spot right now.
What you need to do right now is just keep being you.
And don't let anybody control you and don't let anybody wrap.
And certainly don't let anybody put you on some crazy publicity campaign to try to capitalize on this great moment and immediately get some large record machine behind you and mass produce.
Well, I think, like we talked about earlier, your show in general, the reason people watch it isn't, you know, you could add more people in and have more special effects and lights and, you know, figuratively speaking, you could make this into something bigger than what it already is, but it would just take away.
Like, sometimes the more you add, the more you take away.
It's the fact that you have conversations with people that you're genuinely interested in.
Like, we don't have enough real conversation in any way in the world.
If there's anything I'd like to capitalize on with my opportunity, it's just like...
Because for me, just being in the position that I've been in the last two years and just the trash I've had in my head is...
I tell you, I don't care who...
Look, I haven't been in a church in 10 years, and I'm not saying I'd ever go back into one again.
I don't know about all that, but there's a lot of things in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes that make sense and are timeless to today.
If people could just have enough open-mindedness to just read a little bit of Proverbs and just see what it has to say, I think it would make the world a better place.
It's it's real life advice that that that I that I work toward every day applying in my own life So was there like a moment with you because I've read the legend story but I wanted to ask you this in live in person Was there a moment when you had like a literal come to Jesus moment where you were at rock bottom?
If you come to Virginia, the back of the Suburban, where it's legal, the back of the Suburban will be packed with as much weed that is legal to sell you.
And I can't speak for everybody, but for me, like...
It wasn't that I ever wanted to kill myself.
Like, I knew I wanted to keep trying to fight and get out of whatever it is I was in, but it was almost like...
At some point, I thought I was gonna do it almost as a fight-or-flight response.
Like...
That I couldn't escape whatever it is that I was in and like that was my own that was gonna eventually be my only way out and so It's sad and it's whatever it like I hate even talking about this, but I feel like I should talk about it I mean where else to talk about it but on Joe Rogan But it's like that was one of the things that compelled me to throw a lot of these videos up just off my phone You know like it's funny when I had When I had those songs, and maybe I still do, I haven't looked at the charts in a week or whatever, but I had stuff on iTunes that was like in the top two or three spots, other songs.
Those were just recorded off my Android phone, uploaded on YouTube.
I ripped the WAV file off the YouTube video and then just uploaded it through DistroKid.
And so people were buying, like the number two song on iTunes at one point, I think it was Ain't Got a Dollar, and that's just the audio from the YouTube video.
Do you know how huge these songs would be if you died?
I think that's like the most horrible rumor about Jimi Hendrix is that his manager was like a gangster had him killed.
His manager had him killed because he was going to leave and he owned the music while Jimi was alive and if Jimi died he would get the music and they killed him.
Yeah, maybe I thought, like, I figured, like, that was the only thing I had that was worth anything.
And so, like, if I was going to be a shitty enough person to, like, leave, you know, leave a kid behind and, like, whatever, my family and whatever else, it's like, at least there'd be something there for them to be able to capitalize on and make that.
For creative people in general, life is very imaginative anyway.
Again, it's like you and I could go to the same restaurant, sit down, order the same meal, have the same waitress, identical everything in a parallel time.
You and I would walk out of that restaurant noticing different things.
completely different.
Like the mind perceives things individually, right?
And so like, when you get into a bad headspace like that, your perception of what would otherwise be good things can become very bad.
And I don't know, I don't know the best way to explain it.
Because I'm not well versed on psychology or anything like that.
But that's the best way I can explain it is like, you don't understand sometimes what people are going through, even from the outside in, you know, You look at people who are not living life right, and you're like, I just wish he'd just get his shit together.
I don't understand why he's doing that.
And it's like, because maybe in his head, what he's looking at is totally different than what you're looking at.
The mind's very complicated, you know?
My understanding is even now with all the studies we've done and the technology we have, we understand the mind very little, but there's so much that goes into it and so much of our thoughts come from our gut biome and all.
There's millions of living things within us that I think influence the way we think and what we do.
It's a very complicated thing.
So yeah, it's easy for people to get off track.
It's hard to get back on the track when you get off.
That's why I say I was really just...
On paper, things were great, right?
I was married.
I have a great marriage.
I had a good job.
I worked my ass off, but I made good money.
What were you doing for work?
So the last six years I've been in industrial sales.
So I've worked outside sales for Because I was in the industry, like, working factory work when I was younger.
Had a bad accident.
Couldn't go back to that job.
And then during that recovery period, I went to work.
And I guarantee you, like, if you got your system, like, if you had really good health care...
They could find some issues with your endocrine system.
A lot of times with people that have really bad head injuries, their pituitary gland gets damaged, and your body's not producing hormones correctly anymore, and you're just all fucked up.
It was almost like my brain was stuck in this fight-or-flight type of thing.
And maybe that's what the writing helped, because the writing helped emphasize that more creative part of my brain to get me out of that headspace.
I loved my job I did because I was still in the field so I was still on job sites and industrial plants and hospitals me and so like I've I guess the reason that I've the reason I feel like other than just really divine influence again based off of just the experience I've had the last 60 days with my faith and stuff which is just And I'd love to touch on that some too, but I've had so many conversations with people the last six or seven years because it was my job to go almost kind of like how you talk to people in here every day.
I was going around and talking to Joe Schmo and Billy on job sites all day and every walk of life, not just blue collar.
Those are some just very authentic conversations you have with people because you're just a guy and they're just a guy and you're just talking.
Now, if you don't know that software, and if you know that there's a human being like Jocko out there in the world that's a real person that really does think like that, then you don't think it's possible.
But it is.
So you have to be seeing it.
So you see it, and now you know.
Run that software.
Run that software.
I don't know how much of people's depression.
I mean, I think depression has a mosaic of problems that's associated with it and a mosaic of causes, like a large pattern.
There's a lot of stuff going on that causes people to be depressed.
Some of it, in your case, may very well have been from a physical injury.
Exactly, and I guess that's the thing that I've learned from this, again, from 18-year-old Chris that thought a lot of that was just made up, and people have given excuses to what I understand now about it.
Again, it feels...
That place that your mind can take you, it feels just as real as anything else.
Like, even if you tell yourself...
Like, you can tell yourself a hundred times that, oh, yeah, well, you still got a job.
You still have...
Everything's fine.
It's like, if...
I don't know, it's...
Your perception of reality becomes very distorted when you're in that place.
And it's...
Again, for me, I think a lot of it came down to I just knew I wasn't fulfilling whatever purpose it was I was here to fulfill.
You probably didn't have any energy because you had a head injury.
It's probably a major factor in it.
Major factor.
It's another major factor in people with head injuries.
They drink a lot because their dopamine is really low.
It fucks up everything, man.
And there's people that have traumatic brain injuries that are subconcussive trauma from playing soccer.
People play soccer and heading the ball.
It doesn't even hurt.
But you throttle your brain in the cage over and over and over again and eventually you have TBI. That's real.
You have real CTE symptoms for soccer players.
It's crazy, but the head is just not designed to get hit.
And I've experienced it with so many fighters, so many guys that I know that got knocked out, and then after the knockout, they're severely depressed, both because they lost.
Even if you lose by a decision, you get depressed.
It's a terrible feeling to lose in front of the whole world.
Well sure, inherent loss in a lot of animals does that.
That's a whole other conversation, but one thing I did find from Jordan Peterson talking about the lobsters, it makes me think about the fighters, but it's like you lose that dopamine and that drive.
All those chemicals are very tightly regulated to your performance and your place sort of within the world.
But I can tell you my experience with SSRIs were not pleasant.
All it did was just make me very numb.
And I'm not...
I'm certainly, again, I'm not giving anybody advice on anything, but just in my personal experience, especially for a guy, when you're on SSRIs, he does a lot of things bad to you.
For one, if you're in a relationship, I hear this on both sides with men and women, but Good luck making love with your lover.
Good luck having sex, because that's out the window.
It messes with that.
It messes with your thought patterns.
It was very difficult for me to write music when I was on it.
That was a short-lived life.
The best thing that I found that helped me other than just then just jumping into this and Making this music happen like along the way was actually I found a lot of benefits out of CBD like even smoking CBD flower and so like that Surprisingly like I never really got benefits from the oil but I'd say if anybody is in a position like listening to this right now where you're having like daily panic attacks and you're just like You're just there.
If you're listening, you'll know what I'm talking about, but you're at that breaking point like I was.
I found smoking CBD joints, not ingesting it where it would go through my system, go through my liver and all, but smoking it just like you would smoke traditional cannabis flower, knocked a lot of it right out.
I have to be careful with what I say, because I don't...
Like, my shit stinks.
Like, I'm nobody special, and I'm not here to preach to anybody, but I'm telling you, like, giving things to God, for me, alleviated 99% of what, like...
I had a, like, I don't know how to describe it, but when you experience, and I mean, you've done things that I haven't, like with DMT and all, and that stuff's very intriguing to me, and so I'm open-minded to all that as well, like, I'm not, but, yeah, like, I had, when this,
when I kind of had this breakdown moment and decided that I was going to let whatever ego I had go, and just, at this point, it's like I knew I didn't have much left in for me anyway, and I wanted to serve whatever purpose it was that I was here to serve, it's like, You get this just overwhelming feeling in you.
I'm just crying like a baby, just this very warm feeling throughout me.
That really hasn't gone away since.
I'm not the guy that can play in front of 12,000 people on guitar.
I would be like...
I mean, I had never played a paid gig.
When we played the show at the farm market where Jamie Johnson showed up, that was my first paid gig.
I'm not a guy to go out and play live shows, but I can tell you I was so at peace being up there.
It just felt like that's where I was supposed to be.
And with all of this, it has been.
There's no way that Chris from six months ago could handle what's gone on the last two weeks, but I feel just so empowered from all of it.
I don't know.
I'm telling you, like, again, I'm not anybody special, and I'm certainly not here to preach to anybody, but just from coming from somebody who was just in a really just fucked up place, and I use that word with discretion, but in this case, it describes where I was.
That guy found a lot of peace, like, from this book.
Yeah, I mean, I'd been reading it here and there, off and on, and I had for, like, off and on for a long time, like, because I, again, I was introduced to it as a kid, but it was really just like, um...
I remember I went to the ER for everything that was going on.
I mean, I thought I was seriously going to die.
Like, I was having shooting pains up under my jaw, down in my wrist, in my leg.
Like, just cardiovascular 101 symptoms.
Of course, I'm 31. I had been, like, I could run four miles without stopping, no problem.
Yeah, but I went and did that, and I remember being in the truck after that, just like...
And I just, yeah, I just had a breakdown moment.
I was just crying and was just...
I just felt hopeless, like almost the way a child feels hopeless when they, you know, like you can't find your parent or something, like a four-year-old that can't find his parents or something.
I was just like, just didn't have anything left in me.
I don't know, I just...
I just decided, like, right then and there, I was like, I know I can't do this anymore, but I know that I can...
I know there's things that I need to do, and I just told God, I was like, just let me do it.
And I'll give all this shit up.
I'll give up the weed, and I'll quit getting drunk, and I'll quit being so angry about things, and I'll just...
Like I'll just call it good whatever I've done up from from up until I was 30 or whatever 31 like I will just call that good and I'll start over again and I'll make him the focus and not me and I just tried to Tried to let my let my ego and everything that I was Just let that go and just focus on because because obviously like It's not just me.
I've seen it with even other people I know and I see it with celebrities and everything but I don't know I just feel like we're in such a weird place right now in the world that I feel like God's working through inadvertently through certain people to get to get his point across.
I just changed my perspective I quit worrying about me, and I started worrying about what it is that I'm supposed to do.
It talks in the Bible about being a servant and giving up, I guess, my desire and my will and whatever it is that I want to do.
I don't know the best way to describe it, but it's about It's about trying to use what I have as a tool versus doing what I can in the moment to give myself whatever satisfaction that it is I'm trying to get, you know?
It's about trying to let go of your ego, I guess, in a way.
I mean, people pursue that mentality without faith.
I mean, it's the idea of there being something bigger than you.
But I think inherently all human beings idolize something.
Like, it talks in the Bible about false idols.
We all have false idols.
Like, whether it's our phone or it's a celebrity or it's...
Something we do or it's our addiction to food or drugs or whatever but like it's very difficult for a human to be the biggest thing on their hierarchy There's always something above us right because we're always in pursuit of something bigger than whatever it is in that moment and I think for me it was just about Taking everything else all the distractions and all the other things in my life away and just ensuring that at least and look I'm We all sin and we all do stupid things.
We're all just people.
Nobody's special or righteous.
People sometimes act like they're special and righteous, but we're all just the same thing.
But it's just about trying to make that my idol.
Make God and the concept of what it is that He wants done on this earth my idol versus anything else.
We all serve some master, whether we realize it or not, so why not let it be the master that is above all?
I guess it's like now I don't read it because I feel like I should read it.
To be a better person, it's like now I try to read it for the guidance within it.
And I'm still in the infancy stages of a lot of this.
I've read a lot of Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and Luke.
There's other good books, but just trying to I don't know, like, trying to restructure, I guess, on a granular level, like, I guess, the neural pathways in my brain that have certain habits and certain ways of thought, like, I've tried to retrain that to, you know, like, there's things it says, like, and I'll be very brief with this, I promise, but, like, one thing, ironically, it's Proverbs 4.20, which I thought you would like.
What I Believe that people come across in different points of time and I think they are given messages that need to be delivered And I'm not in any way trying to parallel me to anyone in any of these books by any means, but I do think that...
Throughout history, like even beyond from what's been written in this Bible, there's been important people that came along and said important—or maybe not even important people.
Sometimes it's the lowly of the low that come along and just say things that need to be said.
And if I could— To me, it's like there's no question that this is an intelligent planet we live on, in an intelligent solar system.
Everything is just much more immense than any human on Earth would admit.
Like, even people in science, so much of science is based on theory.
Like, it's this very elegantly written way of thinking, but ultimately, if you take it down to its, like, on a granular level, it's very, it's all, in many ways, based on theory, and so...
I think the earth is far more intelligent than we realize in the systems that we live in.
Like, I just don't think somebody just pulled all that out of thin air.
I do think that in May, maybe it's...
I've been waiting for my time to bring up the aliens, because I... But anyway, but no, but in all seriousness, it's like, for me, I just, I believe that...
If you read through it, so much of it is so timeless.
And so much of it, if you read about the rich and the poor and the wicked and the way, just the inherent human behavior that existed at the time when these books were written back then, it's so parallel to what goes on today.
Like, to the point that you wouldn't, if you just read it out of context and didn't know it was scripture, a lot of it sounds like something somebody wrote two hours ago and posted on a vlog or whatever.
Have you paid any attention to Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson and their theories about the restarting of humanity?
It's a really fascinating field of inquiry and discussion because it's now starting over time to be backed up by more science because there was always this curiosity like when did the human race first invent civilization?
And the current theory is that it was about 6,000 years ago.
It's Mesopotamia, Sumer, and these areas, which is where we found the first written language, like first mathematics, cuneiform language.
But what they believe is that's a restarting of civilization and that very likely civilization existed at a very, very high level somewhere around 11,800 years ago.
And that what caused the end of the ice age also caused just a mass destruction all throughout the universe or all throughout the earth rather of Particles from space slamming into the earth that the earth goes through these comet storms Periodically and it happens.
I think it's every June and every November and when they go through these Clouds of comets, occasionally we get hit by big ones.
And there's a lot of evidence for this.
And what they believe is that when you're looking at the ancient Egyptian structures, when you're looking at some structures in Turkey and other parts of the Middle East, you're looking at things that are older than 12,000 years old.
But I think to us, they went in a direction with their technology that's very different than we did.
We went in this weird direction of internal combustion engines and silicone chips and all these different things.
I think it's very likely that they had comparable, if not better technology, but it moved in a completely different direction, whether it was using sound or vibration or some other completely undiscovered technology that we have yet to invent that was wiped out when civilization was knocked into barbarism.
And I think that's one of the reasons why you go back in early history, people were so fucking savage.
Because I think that the people that survived that 11,800 years ago event I think whatever was left was like fucking Walking Dead.
And I think people lived a horrible life for a long time.
I think it was thousands of years of this until we emerged from that and finally started reinventing agriculture and cities and all these different things again.
So I think the 6,000 year ago mark, I think...
If I had to guess, I would imagine that is the first example of a rebuild of civilization that took thousands of years to emerge from horrific slaughter.
That was one of the initial things that really intrigued me reading.
I think it talks about it in Ecclesiastes, but that everything that's happened under the sun has already happened before and will happen again.
That generations that are yet to come will be forgotten about those that come after them.
I think just in the same way that we have a summer and a fall and a winter and a spring, it's like I think human society, just because of our human nature and our pursuit for...
Whatever it is that we just love to create and develop.
So we shoot all the way up to the top and then some tragedy comes along, whether it's self-inflicted or from comets or whatever, and then there we go right back down to the bottom.
We start over again.
Yeah, like there is a lot of weird things like they've discovered a lot in South America recently because of the new technology like the civilizations that existed down there that we had no idea.
Well, we know quite a bit about Texas, which is a fascinating story and it's of its own.
But, you know, what's really fascinating about Texas is they were dominating, like these nomadic tribes were dominating this land for hundreds of years where people couldn't even settle down.
There's an amazing book called Empire of the Summer Moon that's all about Texas and the Comanches and the Texas Rangers.
Crazy stories.
Just crazy.
But I think what the Bible is saying rings true.
And that if people, you know, they just understood the history of the past from when they wrote the Bible, they had to have known massive catastrophes.
They believe that's what the story of the flood is from.
The flood from Noah's Ark and even from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is even older.
It's like they have these similar kind of stories and they think that these similar kind of stories relate to the immense flooding that occurred after impact.
They think that after impact, well, they know that at one point in time, the United States, half of it was covered with at least like a mile of ice.
Some places it was more than a mile, which is just insane to think.
And what's even, yeah, it's crazy to think about it existing then, but also that...
I guess when I talk about the intelligence of whatever system it is we live in, the fact that the Earth is able to self-correct itself over a period of time.
And even today when we see cycles and things happening, I'm sure that we could destroy the Earth with some of the technology we have now.
I fear that this sort of proxy war that we've involved ourselves in doesn't escalate into something bigger because...
Thousands of them ready to just flatten the planet.
That probably has happened before.
And if I had to look at things with the most optimistic perspective...
My most beautiful optimistic perspective is that's what the aliens are here for.
That's the beautiful one, is that life exists everywhere in the universe and that it's a very complicated process of evolving from territorial apes to becoming these intergalactic travelers that have no ego and don't display irrational behavior and work for whatever purpose.
Because that's where it gets weird.
It's like if you don't have emotions, You don't have jealousy and envy and love and lust and all the things to fight against and all the things to fight for.
If you don't have those things, like what is purpose?
What is our purpose as humans?
It's very terrifying for us.
It's one of the reasons why we're most scared about technological innovation.
Where it comes?
That's Terminator.
You know, that's everything.
All these things that we create that wind up killing us and that we are somehow or another purposeless if we don't have all these things that we cling to, like love.
Fear and anxiety and jealousy and all the stuff that we want.
We want to be praised and loved and all these different things that motivate people to succeed and do things in life.
Without that, what are we?
That's a big question.
But with it, how dangerous are we?
We do use it in so many different beautiful ways like your music or like a great book.
There's ways that people use this that are beautiful.
But it's ultimately the reason why life is so scary.
It's ultimately why during the period of mass communication, during the period of exchange of information worldwide, which has occurred from the start of the 20th century to where we are in the 21st century, we've never had a time where we could communicate with mass amounts of people better.
But it's still, we're at the verge of nuclear catastrophe.
We're still in this very terrifying place where one group of people for some reason or another opposes.
Like, I don't know anyone in Russia.
I don't know anyone in China.
The idea that somehow or another China is my enemy or Russia is my enemy, like, how?
The idea that what the human mind is capable of in creating great art and great music is also capable of dominating massive groups of people through tyranny.
We have to be very careful because that same thing that makes us this emotional being that wants all these weird feelings, that's the same thing that leads us down the road to tyranny.
And I bet that exists everywhere in the universe.
And I bet the aliens, if they're coming down here, They want to be very careful with the species while it's going through this transition.
Because I bet this shit is very touch and go.
And I bet every now and then, some fucking Putin-type character goes, oh yeah?
On the other end of that, though, to your point, that's what I find so important about freedom of speech and the ability for people to have good, honest conversations, because you can imagine...
The mind is just as capable of creating good as it is evil.
I think right now maybe we're creating a little more evil than we are good.
I mean, I know the easy answer is it's the people that run the government in California that have made it into this atrocity that it is that it wasn't maybe 15 or 20 years ago.
But there's also a big problem, too, with homelessness and drugs.
Well, cynical me wants to think that there's a conspiracy.
Cynical me wants to think that if you create more problems, more crime, more confusion, then people will give in to more control by the government to somehow or another mitigate those problems that exist everywhere.
There has to be a solution.
This is the only solution.
You have to have a digital ID. You take it everywhere you go.
Everyone has a cell phone, so everyone has a digital ID. That way we'll catch everyone when they're doing all these crimes.
That's scary.
Because they're not just going to use it for that.
And then they're going to make up crimes.
They're going to decide that you saying things that they don't like that may even be true, like malinformation.
Like, that's a crime.
And then they'll shut down your social media.
Yeah.
Look, we saw that during the Twitter files investigation from when Twitter first was purchased by Elon Musk, and he let these journalists go over all the emails.
They're like, holy shit, the FBI is telling people to delete tweets.
And you've seen that spread out throughout the world.
Like to your point, like 100 years ago, a lot of the even a lot of these countries they're dealing with.
They've got radical politicians that are locking them down and taking away their rights.
And like, yeah, all that's happened within the last 10 or 15 years, maybe.
But in general, like the whatever craziness that we established here, like arguably the first country, I guess you'd say, in modern history that had some form of democracy and some form of involvement of citizens deciding what it is they want, what the world they want to live in.
Like that's spread out.
Like you see, most all countries have some sort of you don't see a lot of kings and dictators running countries anymore.
They have an election cycle now, whether or not it's all credible or not.
I don't know.
But the idea that like sovereign people can live in a land and decide what it is that they want for themselves is something that like has not existed.
It has not existed for a very long period of time in the world.
the world and it is precious that we hold to it and I guess going back to my point earlier about the federal government and state and local level it's like I just think there needs to be more strength within local communities as far as people making decisions and uniting with one another and you know I had I've had a lot of When an ugly ginger's walking around, everybody's like, oh, is it that guy?
And so I've had a lot of people stop me on the street and in parking decks and at the airport.
At the hardware store and like you know how many times I've had now I've at least a dozen times now I've had people tell me that they're talking to people they haven't talked to in five or six years that they got pissed over politics about and just this message that's coming out has given them like I know a guy in my own personal life he hasn't talked to his brother in six years because they disagreed over Trump and Biden and and even prior to that like they just left and right and which one was the Biden guy?
The guy I hang out with is...
Because, obviously, I live out in the country.
I own guns.
The people in my neck of the woods are not...
Despite what they may say on a news organization somewhere, a lot of the people I hang out with in the area of the country I live in is stereotypically red, right?
Because a lot of people will vote, no matter what other...
Influences there are.
A lot of people will vote conservative just because of their Second Amendment rights, which is very much under attack in Virginia.
You know, like you remember when you're at the sanctuary cities and all the counties that decided, well, even if the federal government bans this, we're not going to enforce it type of a thing, which is crazy to see, like in our time.
But yeah, so he voted.
He was a big Trump guy, and he watched his certain news organization, and the other guy was for Biden, and he watched his news organization.
And so they just basically picked up whatever narratives they got from each other's news, and they would just...
Well, it's not a wise thing to just apply to your life as a human being.
You can have people in your life that have disagreements with you.
I have people in my life that disagree with me on so many things.
Absolutely on politics.
Absolutely.
You know, especially like when I was a Bernie Sanders supporter.
You know, there's so many people that are like, you're a fucking idiot.
Like, listen, I would like to try it that way.
Let's try some guy who doesn't want war at all.
Let's try some guy who wants to take a certain percentage off speculation trades in the Wall Street where they're doing these and they're running a tiny fraction of a penny for each one of them.
And he's saying it would generate an insane amount of money that could be applied to education, that could be applied to healthcare, you could give people free healthcare, you could give people free education.
Well, why wouldn't we do that?
If you got some guy who doesn't want to divert money to these fucking forever wars and instead wants to apply it to communities, I was like, let's give that a chance.
Maybe it won't work.
I don't know jack shit about politics, but I sincerely believe the guy.
And I'm like, that to me is at least an option for change.
And that guy had been the same guy his whole life.
He had been always pushing for that his whole life.
He's kind of gotten tired in his later years, but that's just understandable.
And no matter what anybody says about the Biden family, the Trump family, I've seen a lot of people change that now, though, in recent years.
Like, even people who were hardcore conservatives and hardcore Democrats, like, I don't think whatever a Republican, a Democrat, was represented at some point in time is anymore.
Like, both sides have...
I mean, like I said, I love freedom of speech and I love the Second Amendment, but...
There's a lot of things that I see that I don't, like, I mean, you gotta think, I'm 31, so I was in fourth grade at 9-11, so we've been, we were in endless war from 9-11 on, and, you know, even when we shouldn't have been, like, so both sides have, like, just picked up on things and ran with it, but they use certain emotional triggers to, like, keep their fan base happy, you know?
Like, oh, they're gonna take your guns, and the other side, they've got all their emotional triggers, and there are things that they're trying to feed their audience with, but I guess, like, at the end of the day, It doesn't help either side.
In my opinion, no one can go into that position in politics in the White House or anything else for that matter at this point because of how just inefficient and how large the federal government is.
I don't think anybody can go into those positions.
Overnight save everything.
They can certainly make big influences.
I mean, you saw when Trump was in office, the economy was rocking.
But then other things he did, you know, like warp speed and all that, there was a lot of controversy around all of that.
Do you think that he had the time to investigate the efficacy of the COVID vaccines that were this novel mRNA technology that had never been applied to hundreds of millions of people?
And you had to trust the CDC and Fauci and all those people.
I want to find out if that's true, though, because that could be Russian disinformation, because that's true, too.
Here's one of the reasons why free speech is so important in this country, given the parameters of social media, is because we know that foreign interests are interfering with our discourse.
We know it.
It's proven that there's troll farms they have in Macedonia.
I'm sure they have them in China.
They have troll farms where people create accounts and then they argue with people about stuff.
And they'll post links to fake stories and they'll post fake information.
They may even post fucking AI voice swap shit.
But what they're doing is trying to get people arguing about stuff, trying to get people to diminish their faith in democracy, trying to get people at each other's throats from the right and the left.
And maybe that's what attracted people to Trump, and maybe what attracts people to like, um, see, like, thank God I haven't, especially now, at least I've got a good excuse not to keep up with politics anymore, because I've got a few other more important things on my plate, but I think that's what attracts people to like that rough, raw, authentic type of speech, like it's not clean cut, and it's not professional, but it's, At least, like you said, even with Bernie, which, who knows, I don't know anything about Bernie, but...
Because, you know, you can look at politicians over a 15-year span, and, like, they'll quote something from, like, oh, good God, I think anybody, any politician from the 90s is going to have a lot different opinions on emotional triggers that we talk about today.
When Biden passed the crime bill in 94, there's this famous speech that he gives about locking people up so that his wife is safe and so that they're safe and that I'm safe.
And it sounds like right-wing, like, Proud Boy speech.
I know very little about any of this, but my understanding is even...
I know for sure with Hillary Clinton, but I think even with Obama, originally their stance was very much against gay marriage, and then it flipped around...
Yeah, well, that's what a lot of guys in the comments were saying on the Richmond North of Richmond video.
They're like, I don't think that tree stand is going to be We're very good this year with all that screaming and shouting y'all were doing it out there.
Yeah, I hunt on my land and I let people come in and hunt it.
I don't run dogs or anything, but that's real popular in Virginia, so we'll do our thing at early season and then we let the club come in and run dogs at the end of the year.
You know, that's very controversial in Virginia.
There's like...
You want to talk about Coke and Pepsi politics, that's definitely part of it.
People are very opposed to running dogs, and you've got some guys that it's such a long tradition.
Those two clash together.
But as far as any of the big game, like the stuff we were checking out, I'd love to experience that once.
Well, there's nothing wrong with not wanting to shoot an animal, you know, and if you don't want to shoot a bear.
Look, I've eaten bear.
I've hunted bear.
Bear tastes good.
You can eat bear, but it's not my favorite thing to eat.
It's not, but it is also an animal that has to be managed.
The thing about biological management, this is the uncomfortable truth of it, you have to have a balance.
There's wildlife biologists, they observe populations, and they want to enact some sort of a balance of predator and prey.
And when you have an overabundance of predators in areas that are, like when you have hunting that's off limits, you create a really dangerous imbalance.
And they did that in all places in New Jersey.
The governor of New Jersey ran on this platform of stopping the bear hunt in New Jersey because a lot of people in New Jersey they live in urban environments like Newark and you know like Hackensack and like that's where the population is and like we don't want you vote I mean voting to kill bears why would you kill bears what they don't understand is like rural New Jersey has the highest bear per capita in the country.
There's more black bears in New Jersey than any other state.
Because they're fucking everywhere there, and there's not a lot of hunting.
So they had a bear season, and this governor came in and stopped it.
It was part of the things that he ran on.
And then when he got into office, he realized after a while, like, oh my god, we have to kill these bears, because human-bear interactions are growing up.
A kid at Rutgers got killed by a fucking bear.
He was out in the woods near the campus, and he got fucking slaughtered.
I remember even when I first bought the place, like, right after I closed on it, because I'd had...
My house before that, I had a house with five acres and, like, had the little homestead thing going, and we had, like, you know, some basic stuff, horses and chickens and...
Well, that's cool.
But I knew I wanted more land, and with the way everything is, like...
They're not making any more of it.
So I said, I'll go ahead.
And that caused a lot of controversy with my better half and I because she thought I was crazy that I was selling our comfortable house we're living in to go buy a land and stick a freaking camper on it until we can afford to build something.
But man, I remember my first weekend, it was Memorial Day weekend of 2019. It was like the first time I slept out there.
I knew what a coyote was, but I'd never heard a bobcat at night.
It was me and the dogs, and we were tent camping out there, and it was like 2 in the morning.
It was a bobcat right on us, doing the noise they make.
That's one thing I am excited with the opportunity I've been given with all this is I do want to travel more and get out into nature and different places.
I think the farthest west I've ever been is Tennessee, so I'd love to go.
And I don't know what'll happen with me next year.
Everybody wants to pull me in 10 different directions, but I've always just been drawn to nature and being connected to it.
I'm sure we'll do some big shows and we'll do some things next year, but my heart is just pulling me.
I'm just excited to go experience...
The first time I go to Wyoming and stuff, that's going to be it for me.
Just getting to see that experience.
I've seen it on the internet.
It's pretty stunning.
I've watched all these videos in Canada.
One of my favorite YouTubers is Camping with Steve.
It drives my wife crazy.
Anytime we want to watch something at night, I always want to watch camping with Steve, but he's a guy up in Canada, and he goes and does all these obscure different types of camps, different places, but just some of the area he explores up there in Canada is just awesome.
Despite all the craziness and all the people that have come out just clawing at me like that movie we were talking about at the beginning, there's been a lot of that.
There's also been a lot of just really down-to-earth people that just have the interest of me trying to preserve whatever it is I've created here and turn it into something To help me, keep me on the train tracks.
You know, it's just a while.
It has been a while, a couple weeks, but like I said, it's been a lot of fun.
Well, the thing is, yeah, I see a lot of the negative stuff online, but man, if you read through my emails and my social media messages and the people I've talked to on the street, there's no question that the majority of people perceive it in the way that I hoped that it would be perceived.
And that's what I've said even with people at certain organizations that I strongly disagree with that have reached out trying to do interviews or even some of the people that have come out with the hit pieces and all.
I'm like, look, I respect what you're trying to do.
Same way with the people in the music industry that have approached me.
It's like, I don't necessarily want to work with your organization, but I respect you for what you're doing.
I mean, they're just trying to earn an income just like anybody else, you know?
If you're doing a show on CNN, you're in a system.
That's what you're doing.
You work for a system.
There's no way around that.
You are part of a gigantic corporation that has a very specific kind of news that it does, and you're told how you're supposed to do this, and you're hired accordingly, and you know what your job is.
It's not it's not you representing you and I think what your music one of the reasons why I represented or what why resonated rather with people is because it represents them It represents humans like a real human being this isn't just some bullshit hit written by AI right is a real human why don't I read on the internet that it was a You probably could but I don't think you'd put the fudge rounds in there Yeah,
that doesn't seem like a I would be that creative It made those things rhyme It's a it's funny that that was one that was the most controversial.
I really thought when I because it's funny like to just I guess if I just to tell the story about the song and how it was written it was like I had the first again this that song to me we weren't even I was I didn't even want to record that song when Draven from Radio WV came down he had hit me up on a Thursday about coming to do the recording And,
um, I'd watched a lot of Radio WV, like, um, Logan Halstead and a few of the, Nolan Taylor, like, those guys are just, they're some of my recent favorites, and they were all sort of debuted on his channel, and so I've been watching them for years, and, um...
A guy on TikTok got me in contact with him, and so he called me on a Thursday.
He wanted to come that Saturday and record, and I only had the first half of Richmond North of Richmond even written.
It was on my TikTok.
I was sitting in my bathroom, like, just half-heartedly singing through the...
I didn't even know if I was going to...
When stuff comes in my head, a lot of times I would just post part of it online, just like...
To get it out there, you know, very casually.
And everybody in the comments was like, oh, you gotta finish this one, whatever.
And then Draven was insistent that we needed to do that song because I didn't...
My top song in my head was Ain't Got A Dollar.
Ain't Got A Dollar and I Want To Go Home are like two of my favorites.
So I just threw the rest of the song together.
I finished it the day...
We recorded it around 6.30 on a Saturday and I had had the song finished at like 3 o'clock on a Saturday.
So it was very thrown together.
Had no idea that was going to be the one...
And Alex, I was a little reluctant to even record it because I was like, I'm not really an anthem song kind of guy.
A lot of my other songs are different than that.
So, I mean, I'm glad he had the insight to tell me to do it.
But, yeah, it's just kind of funny the way it was thrown together.
But really, I thought when we uploaded the song, I thought the controversy in it was going to be more around the first line and the second verse than anything.
About miners on an island somewhere, like I thought that was gonna be...
I'm a writer, and so I hope moving forward that I'll just be able to communicate with people just through music and not worry so much about doing interviews and stuff like that.
I mean, if there is a message to get out of all of this, it's just that you don't need anybody to do what it is you want to do.
Like, I'm just a guy that wrote some songs.
I recorded them on my phone.
I uploaded them through DistroKid, and like, here I am.
am and um it doesn't matter what your pursuit is like you don't need some big industry fancy schmanchy whatever to back you up to do it you just want you just got to go do it you know and i think there's so many people that are like and i know people like that that are very good at things but they say oh i'm not good and like the the fear holds a lot of people back from being successful you Your fear of failure will keep you from being successful all day long.
So I hope that if anything resonates out of this, it's that.
Just do what you want to do and don't worry about if people are going to like it or not.