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March 26, 2022 - This Past Weekend - Theo Von
01:54:56
E385 Jelly Roll

Jelly Roll is a rapper, songwriter, and entertainer from Nashville, TN. Theo and Jelly Roll discuss how he got into music, his family and upbringing, county jail drama, first kisses, and bringing back the caesar wrap at Jimmy John's. Find Jelly Roll: https://www.instagram.com/jellyroll615/ ------------------------------------------------- Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com Podcastville mugs and prints available now at https://theovon.pixels.com ------------------------------------------------- Support our Sponsors: Manscaped: Go to https://manscaped.com for 20% off + free shipping with code THEO The Zebra: Go to https://thezebra.com/theo for your free quote today BlueChew: Go to https://bluechew.com/theo to get your first month free ------------------------------------------------- Music: "Shine" by Bishop Gunn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3A_coTcUek ------------------------------------------------- Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: tpwproducer@gmail.com Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: http://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------- Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips ------------------------------------------------- Producer: Colin https://instagram.com/colin_reiner Producer: Riley https://www.instagram.com/rileymaufilms/?hl=en See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Today's guest is a musician, an entertainer, and really just a smooth, really just a smooth criminal, honestly.
He's one of the most infectious human beings that I've been around, and I'm grateful for you guys to get to hear his story.
Today's guest is Jelly Roll.
I'll turn that parking brake and let myself unwind.
Shine that light on me.
I'll sit and tell you my stories.
Shine on me, no song.
I'll stay at just before Bender, it is, baby.
The song, what is it?
You got Dead Man Walking.
It's the number five song on rock radio.
It's called Dead Man Walking.
It's fucking crazy.
I've never had a song on radio ever.
Dang, baby.
So, yeah, it's big shit.
Is that crazy?
It's weird.
Yeah.
But in a cool way.
Oh, yeah.
It's like, as a kid, I don't care who you are, especially like my age group, you dream of having a song on the radio.
So having one on the radio is like surreal.
You know, that is kind of a thing.
When you're young, man, and you hear that radio, it always seemed like it would be impossible to get your song to come out of it, I bet.
Oh, yeah.
Imagine being a little white trash kid like me and you, and you're wondering how it's coming through the radio anyways.
You're looking around like there's no cord on the car.
How is this even coming through right now?
Yeah, yeah.
It's almost like they were sitting inside of your motor and playing for you personally.
Yeah.
I used to have a dream that at one point in automobiles, they would have a disc or something you'd put into the dashboard.
Right.
And then the band, they'd have like hologram.
I always had this vision that hologram was really going to pop off.
And the band would come out onto your dashboard the way it would be built and the band would perform right there for you.
Right there.
Yeah.
God, we should still make that.
That could make money.
We could make some wrecks.
Yeah, sure.
First day I smoke a doobie and look over there and see Hendrix shredding.
I'm fucking crashing.
Yeah, somebody's just locked in on Wiz Khalifa.
They can't even handle it.
No, it's cool, man.
So what was that for you?
For like me as a kid, it was like radio was like the thing.
Like you want, like as an artist, you wanted to have a song on the radio.
Now I have it.
So what's for you?
Was it like, I guess was it, did you come up in like the disc comedy era?
Like you wanted a comedy album or was it like Comedy Central?
Yeah, getting on Comedy Central was big doing that.
And getting the album out and getting it on the iTunes charts was real big, you know?
I remember 30 Pounds of Hamster Bones was like my first real album release.
And that got onto the, like, I think we got to number one at some point, you know, just based on the way the sales go.
And so that was pretty wild.
But I remember my first, do you remember the first song you ever heard through the radio?
Oh, man.
Probably not the first song I ever heard through the radio.
I know the first like album we went and bought or like cassette tape my sister bought.
Yeah.
But I can't think of like the first song I heard on the radio.
You remember the first song you like remember hearing on the radio?
Yeah, I remember I had a, ah, my mom had some like babysitters took us to summer camp, right?
So they'd come pick us up in the morning and they would take us.
And this one lady picked me up.
I feel like her name was Heather, but I don't know.
But she picked me up, man, and she, they had Bon Jovi she had playing.
And I'd never, I think because there was a woman involved also that was like the babysitter and she was like hot and she like had tits and everything.
And so like, I remember it was, uh, what was, um, what was one of those Bon Jovi hits?
It was, what was like one of his biggest, most popular songs?
Oh, fuck, dude.
I just woke up and I'm high.
Oh, that's it.
I haven't even ate breakfast and I'm stung.
And I'm sitting here with Theo talking about Bon Jovi.
I'm like, fucking, this is wild.
I'm on the radio and Theo's telling me about Bon Jovi.
I would like to touch on Heather for a second, though.
I would have liked to as well, brother, baby.
I'll tell you that, dude.
I think we all have a first teacher as dudes that we like.
Mine was my kindergarten teacher.
I don't remember my first grade teacher, second grade teacher, third, fourth, fifth, none of them.
But I remember my kindergarten teacher's name was Liz Harris.
And that is when I knew I liked asses.
She had the fats, not the flats.
I mean, she had, boy, that thing, man, she had a monkey on her back, dog.
She real doubled up, huh?
I remember going home when my brother had to explain to me what I was feeling.
I was like, I think you could pop it.
I was like, you know, as a kid, I was like, and my brother was like, oh, yeah, you're going to like asses when you're older.
Flew over my head then.
Oh, yeah.
Later, oh, dude, my wife's got Miss Harris's ass to the T. Yeah.
School's in the session.
I'll set an apple.
I put an apple right between them cheeks.
For you, it was Heather.
For me, it was Miss Harris.
Dude, I remember, and she, I would always be like, hey, can I put your seatbelt on for you all the time?
We'd be in the car, and I think we had to sit in the back, but I'd be like, can I put your seatbelt on for you?
And she would just take it off, and I would like reach across.
You're going to put that seatbelt on.
Oh, it made me feel so while listening to Bob Jovi.
Yeah, yeah.
I wish I could remember that song, man.
It was.
But anyway, it was one of his hits, man.
But yeah, for my listeners that don't know about you, man.
So you guys start.
So take me through the story, man.
Your story is a really inspirational one.
And also, you just have this infectious energy, man.
I just noticed it.
Anytime I'm around you, I wish I was you.
Oh, dude.
Thank you.
I feel the same way about you.
That guy's having so much fun.
Like, I want to be that guy.
I love you, man.
Thank you, brother.
Yeah, you bet, man.
You got that tan, man.
That's why I'm fucking blowing it.
You think?
You spraying that thing on, man?
Are you laying in the bed or what?
Dude, I just went to damn.
Oh, you were fishing?
Oh, yeah, I was fishing.
I just seen happy belated birthday, by the way.
Oh, thanks.
I can't fucking wait to spend the birthday, dog.
Dude, you're too kind, man.
That was with the Jimmy John, by the way.
Like the Jimmy John, Jimmy John?
Yeah, dude.
We went out there, it was like, we caught, Like, the vessel was damn nice, dude.
I got to, it was like Noah was on that bitch.
You know what I'm saying?
It was damn, dude.
They had animals trying to get on.
Fish were trying, like, damn, that bitch looks nice, dog.
You know, you'd see all these Mexican fish were like, yeah, give us a ride back to freaking Cuba.
You know, like, they had fish jumping on that.
Panthers were getting on that bitch.
They had animals I didn't even know existed out there trying to get in.
It was a luxury boat, right?
So you're out on there and they had a couple, they got like some fishermen, like men that are just, you know, just a couple damn Moby Dick lurkers out there.
And them bitches, they show up and so they put in, sometimes if you're in like the deep water, they have these big electric rod and reels on the sides and they would cast those down to like 1,500 feet or something.
So you would just cast them down and then you would see the thing go like that, you know, and so you were pressing these buttons instead of doing reeling.
Oh shit, it's like playing an Xbox for fishing.
Yeah, it was, bro.
That's fucking up.
I mean, it was like you could catch the past.
You could have memories come up.
Somebody pulled up a memory of something when you were a kid.
You're like, damn, that was deep, bro.
So that was unbelievable.
I was like, is that the real Jimmy John?
That's him, baby.
That sandwich jockey, dude.
He, yeah, that man turkey timed his way into.
You know what's fucked up?
I look at you and I get jealous because I'm like, you have all the friends I want, but don't need.
It's like Todd Graves is your homie, too, from County.
I'm like, I'm already fat.
I'd be like, I'd die.
If I had your friend list right now, I'd just like live in a house full of sandwiches and fried chicken.
I'm like, he's got every, you're cool with everybody I want to be cool with, but God knows I don't need to be cool.
Some of those people, I'm not even going to introduce you to, man.
I've seen y'all carrying the Jimmy John sandwiches on.
I was like, fuck me.
In honor of your veins, on behalf of your veins, I'm going to say I'm not introducing you to those dogs.
Yeah, especially not the chicken, man.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, man.
I've been pretty lucky.
And those are the guys that have just come on the podcast, and then you kind of get to, you know, have a relationship with them or become friends with them.
But that was unbelievable.
And then there's some points where you get a rod and reel and you're actually doing the fishing, you know, and it's like an industrial size.
It's like something they'd sell at Home Depot.
Oh, dude.
I just think about the distance from what looked like where you were at on the boat to the water.
Yeah.
It wasn't like when you're sitting on like the little, you know, like the little boat in the bayou, you probably used to get on where you just kind of tip your little toe in the water.
I mean, it looked like it was a full-blown dive.
Nobody touched the water.
At one point, I jumped in for like 30 seconds because they had some real bad sharks in there.
But you couldn't reach out and touch the boat.
Yeah, touch the water.
Yeah, it looked like you were high as fuck.
Yeah, you were.
And then you go inside and you're like in a damn Marriott Plus or something.
You know, that bitch is.
How many days were you sleeping on the water and everything?
Yeah, you go to sleep out there, dude.
It's like being in somebody's, it's like being, I feel like in a, just like in a damn black lady's womb, bro.
That thing is comfortable.
Did you sleep good or did the rock and fuck with you?
Did you rock and sleep?
Put me out.
It's like being on a bus without the sound of the engine.
Oh, yeah.
It's like furniture's all made out of Percocet, baby.
You fall straight to sleep on that shit, son.
And it was his boat, Jimmy John's boat?
Yeah, yeah, it's Jimmy John's boat, man.
So that was awesome.
He took me, it was my birthday, so he took me out there.
And so we flew out on Friday straight down to Bahamas.
And then we jumped on the boat.
Yeah, there's some dude like an island guy.
He's like, you want that roast beef sound buttons?
They don't even have a Jimmy John for a thousand miles.
There's some dude standing there.
He's just sitting there with Jimmy John.
With a box of Jimmy John.
Listen, Jimmy John, this is for you.
Would you please bring back the Chicken Caesar wrap?
It was fire.
And it was limited time only.
And I think the time was too limited, sir.
Do you like to bring it back, man, or use your influence to help you, boy, man?
It mean a lot to me.
We'll see.
Look, I'll put that word in, baby.
I'll send that up the ladder, man.
That's the only promo clip I want from the day.
It's me asking Jimmy John to bring a discontinued sandwich back.
I think we could help.
I fucking hate you.
I think we could help, man.
So how did you find Parker?
We were just talking off camera about how much people call him.
How does Theo find music?
That's what I'm really getting at here.
Oh, all right.
And then I want to learn about how you got into music, man, because I really want my audience to know that.
You know what I do, man?
I'm on TikTok, man.
Yeah.
They got this fella 4 track that I listened to.
I think he's out of South Carolina.
Is that the guy you came out to the other night at the comedy club?
Yes.
Yes.
That show's banging.
Yeah, bro.
Can you pull it up?
if you can get him on here Gang, gang, baby.
Hundred more rats not the gun interact.
I'm country thugging.
Lymph in the front, squad in the back.
I'm country thugging.
You better watch out when you're talking loud.
Yeah, my cousins.
Got locked down, I'm popping now.
The country buzzing.
Hundred more rats, not the gun in the rack.
I'm country thugging.
Lymph in the front.
Squad in the back.
I'm country thugging.
That's good, man.
That was really good.
Because I remember the other night when we were at the shop show, you was telling the sound guy, it was like, yeah, play this song.
And I think I asked you afterwards.
You came out.
I was like, yo, that song was fire.
Who is it?
He's like, four track.
I was like, you were like, I just found him.
You were like, I just like, you just found him.
That's TikTok.
Look, man, when you don't have a family or nothing, bro, you TikTok at night by yourself and you come across a little four track.
Sadly, TikTok's so popular now.
You do that when you have a family.
Yeah.
There's sad.
Some nights I lay in the wife of my bed and we're just watching two separate TikTok feeds.
You guys are just sitting there just inadvertently hooked on Walker Hayes' TikTok.
It's like hell.
I'm just watching fancy like on repeat.
Like I'm being, like I'm being, like I'm finally getting punished for my sins of life.
Oh, especially since they talk about Applebee's.
I bet they get you bedtime.
Maybe some of them lyrics.
Oh, dude.
How do I find music?
How do I find some music?
That's probably how I got it.
Actually, my buddy, I was telling you that story.
My buddy, whenever you, back in the day, when you would just, you know, ejaculating was a big thing.
Now it's kind of like all over the place.
It feels like, you know, so much pornography.
Back in the day, you had to really, you know, I remember we'd buy a drawing of some cudder or something, you know, for the weekend.
You know, we had this dude Nikki would sell us a little sketch, us a little bit of cuddle for the weekend, and we'd take that bitch home on Friday and bring it back on Monday, you know, because you got $2 back if you brought it back.
Yeah, you had to piece your own magazine together where this guy had a page from this one and this guy had a page from this one.
You take three, four pages and tape them together and be your own kind of magazine.
One be a hustler, one be a Playboy.
It actually had yarn keeping it together.
This is my shit.
But my buddy Scott would put a map up in his car.
He's riding with his folks one time.
He puts a map up in the car because at that age, if you start masturbating, that's the thing.
It gets you hooked.
The devil gets you hooked on your own dick.
And you just start, bro, you sitting there, man.
And my buddy Scott did it.
He was just telling his family where they were going.
And the whole time he's behind this map.
Just wiping over shit.
Just ruining Maine.
That's all he was doing.
And I thought I was a gangster because I could pull it sometimes if my cellmate was asleep when I was in jail.
And even then, I felt pretty sketchy because there was another grown man there.
But could you imagine just having a car pull, dude?
Your sister's in the back seat kicking the seat.
Dude, that's family huge.
Where's Steve Harvey when that shit's going down?
Bring that question up.
You over there adding tributaries to your own freaking map.
So take me through, man.
So how did you, so how did you get into music, man?
How did it start for you?
When you're coming up, where does music hit you first in your life?
My mother was probably like...
And she didn't leave much at all when I was a kid.
She was a recluse.
She never really left the house.
And she would like, her making it to the kitchen table was kind of like a big deal, you know?
Yeah.
And you'd walk in the house and mom would be at the kitchen table and she'd have a cigarette lit and she'd be sitting on a wood chair Indian style right there in the kitchen back when you could smoke it.
Back when restaurants had smoking sections.
Smoking inside places was a thing, you know?
And she'd be there smoking a cigarette and she'd have a record plan.
And she'd just have her eyes closed and I just, I could tell that the music was doing something to her, man.
Like I just remember watching her and thinking, man, this music's like whatever that is is helping her, you know?
Or she'd play like Bette Mittler the Rose and cry.
I could still hear in my head, play this at my funeral.
And to this day, if you play Bette Mittler the Rose right now, I might tear up.
And she'd be like, play this at my funeral, Jelly, play this my funeral, baby Jason.
She'd just smoke a cigarette.
And I just remember thinking, man, I want to make people feel the way this makes my mother feel.
That's the songwriting aspect of it, right?
That was what ignited the songwriter in me.
Now, the influences are cool because I was the baby, right?
I was the youngest.
How many?
Two brothers, one sister.
And my sister, who she's still with to this day, was within.
So she's been with this man 30-something years.
He pretty much lived with us from her high school years up.
So I say I had three brothers, two brothers, a brother-in-law that lived with us, and a sister.
And we always had some broke cousin on the couch or some broke family in the living room with blow-up mattresses or something.
This was just some.
Like future convict.
Yeah, this is our current convict or somebody on the run from the police.
We had that kind of a house.
And we would like.
Yeah, when hide-and-go seek was hide and go seek.
For sure.
I'll tell you a story about that in a second.
It's even better.
But when I got in the car with anybody, because I was the baby, I had no fucking control of the radio, Dow.
I was the last motherfucker that got to pick the radio.
Oh, yeah.
And it was so important.
That was it.
Who got to pick the radio?
Who got to pick the radio, right?
So it's like when I was in the car, I had one brother that listened to nothing but gangster rap music.
Bizzle's sitting here is awesome because he's met my whole family.
Yeah.
We got tour manager Bizzle Gibbons is sitting here in the studio.
I'm going to throw him in the middle of our shit because looking at him, he's looking over there like, yeah, I met most of him.
I had one brother named Scott that's the middle older that was a straight gangster rap guy.
Like Tupac, biggie, like gangster gangster.
The more gangster, the better.
Well, was he dating white chicks still or how gangster was he?
I mean, no, he was everywhere.
Yeah, his dick didn't discriminate.
He was a man of.
He got that.
For sure.
He was all about it all.
And we lived in a super mixed neighborhood anyway.
So it was just super common to, you know, like all my brothers had a black best friend or something.
It was just so many, you know, whatever.
Yeah, same.
Neighbors were black.
We had a Chinese guy in the neighborhood.
A couple Mexicans.
Dude, we had an Iranian family down at the bottom of the street that were super savage, dude.
They'd bring Iranian food up, dude, Iraqi food, and it was fucking fire, dude.
But anyways, so I'm fucking high.
But we get in the car and like all these different radio stations would play.
So, like, one brother beat gangster rap.
My sister listened, like, nothing but Metallica or Stone Temple Pilots.
Yeah, for sure.
Like, fucking Nirvana when they first came out.
This was all huge.
Oh, yeah.
And then I had another brother listen to like super hip-hop shit, like Biz Marquis kind of shit, Wu-Tang shit.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And then dad would listen to either jazz or back then, like singer-songwriter stuff, like James Taylor, Jim Crochy.
My mother listened to Motown, Olies, and like outlaw country music.
Damn.
So it's like every room I'd walk into or every fucking, everywhere I'd go, it'd be some different music plan.
So when people are like, dude, you kind of do all kind of musics.
I'm like, I'm a fucking human jukebox, man.
I grew up in a, you know, I didn't get to pick a music I liked and get to play it because I didn't fucking, you know, everybody else had their genre of music in their world, but me.
I didn't have like a place I could go listen to what I wanted to listen to.
I just had to listen to whatever fucking room I walked in.
Yeah, that's funny.
The younger brother is kind of, you kind of that, that ear victim, bro.
You know, it's like whatever, you kind of, you start to get into whatever anybody else is into.
I never thought about that.
The older brother really gets to pick the radio, and that kind of shapes the younger brother a little bit.
It's like if my brother's listening to Dr. Dre, then I'm all drayed up.
I'm buying that t-shirt with the weed leaves.
And when he switches to Nirvana, dude, I'm cutting my wrist, but not with sharp silverware.
Yeah, I didn't get to get in the car and be like, I really want to listen to 107.5 the river.
Nobody gave a fuck what I wanted to listen to, you know?
Like, we didn't even know you could talk.
I tell you, the first cassette tape I ever got given, I got all these gifts for Christmas, and then they were like, we got one last gift from you, and this is from your brothers and sisters.
I was like, oh, this is probably going to be the coolest gift ever.
And they gave me a little bitty package, and it was a cassette tape, and it was Rex and Effects Rump Shaker.
Yeah.
And I was like, this is gangster.
And I remember at that moment, it was something that was finally mine.
Because mama had bought me a boom box, and daddy bought me a boom box, but nobody, I didn't have nothing to play in it yet.
So then my brother, and they did the coolest thing besides that.
And they handed me the Rex and Effects tape, then they handed me five blank cassette tapes.
And I said, what are these for?
And they were like, we're going to show you how to record songs off the radio.
You remember this era?
Oh, right, where you put the cassette tape in?
Listen, for all of y'all that want to know how old I am, I'm that fucking old.
Top 10, but that's what I'm saying.
Yeah, you'd go to the top 10 and you'd wait for the perfect moment for the song to start.
Then you'd hit the play and record button.
You got to get it just right because you didn't want to hear the radio DJ or the skip.
You wanted just a song.
Then you stop right there and you play it for one more second so there was a space between the two songs.
And then you'd hit it again.
You know, or you call and request a song that wasn't popular yet, and you'd have to wait for hours for them to play it.
They're like, who's this donkey?
And they taught me that.
So I started making like mixed cassette tapes.
And I knew I was on to something different then because like I'd get in the car and find out, I got a cassette tape.
They're like, we don't care about your cassette tape, but please play it.
And it would like go from like rap to something else.
And a brother would be like, what the fuck is up?
I'd be like, well, Shelby taught me about this song.
So everybody got happy.
So you really were.
You really were like a jukebox.
Yeah.
Oh, to this day, man, you'll play very few songs that I'm not like, yeah, I know that, Aaron.
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That's at thezebra.com slash Theo.
So what was the family life like?
What was it like growing up?
Were you guys like, so you had a mom and y'all had a stepdad or no stepdad?
No, no, I had a father.
Oh, you had a dad?
Best friend in the world.
Sweetest dude on earth.
Taught me to be a little bit of a dad.
Oh, that's right.
Buddy was your dad, right?
Yeah, I've heard stories about him.
He is a fucking legend.
He really is, dude.
Old school gangster, just laid back, storyteller, but softly spoken, didn't talk nearly as much as me, but said a lot more.
And he was an old school gangster like that.
But dad and mother were together whenever I was younger.
They divorced in my earlier teenage years.
Why'd they divorce, you think?
Oh, fuck, dude.
You know, frankly, mom, you know, God, I love her to death.
Sorry if you're watching this, birdie.
But she, you know, she just, she, she dealt with so much of her own shit, man.
I just, I couldn't, I don't, who she is now and who she was then are two different people, so I'm sure she won't be offended by this.
I couldn't have been with her.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Who she was back then.
I mean, he was pushing a square through a circle for a long time, you know.
She was really struggling.
I mean, I'm talking about a woman that I didn't see not wearing a nightgown for 15 years.
Oh, wow.
You know what I mean?
Like, I don't have a memory of her being like in a kindergarten thing, or you know what I mean?
Like, none of that shit.
Damn, so that must have left you feeling almost like, I mean, if your mom wasn't showing up for a lot of stuff, it probably left you feeling kind of unseen or something sometimes.
For sure.
And no judgment against your mom.
Look, my mom struggles with a lot of that, and it's just they went through it.
So somebody did it, you know, they went through it.
Yeah, in their era, you know, now that I'm old enough, I look back at her and go, man, she grew up in a house with three other sisters.
She grew up with a single mother.
My mother's 73 years old.
So if you think about her growing up with a single mother raising four kids, she was the town whore in everybody's eyes.
That's normal now.
You see a bitch at the grocery store right now with five kids and be like, shit, she must be from Antioch.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like, you seen it back then.
It was like, you fucking whore.
You know what I mean?
You damn hard.
I was looking forward.
You know, it's like totally different world.
So, I mean, I kind of get where she came from.
And her mother, which was my granny, was just fucking mean as a fucking beaver on meth.
She was just a fucking, you know what I'm saying?
She was mean, dude.
And I knew that about her.
So, you know, I get her issues.
But yeah, they had divorced.
But Pops ran a meat company for years.
Oh, damn, what kind of meat was that?
Oh, dude, we got three generations of meat salesmen.
Oh, really?
Dude, I can tell you more about a pig than I can tell you about pussy.
And I know a little bit about both.
And I'm telling you, man, there's just something, dude.
He was, my grandfather ran a meat truck called Deford Sausage Company.
And then my father took it over, and it was called Deford Wholesale Meats.
So they changed LLCs, huh?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, dad got into the wholesale business.
You know, my grandfather was old enough that they actually rode around in a truck and went door to door.
This is back when the closest grocery store to a neighborhood was 15, 20 minutes away, and it was a buy rider, a CB Smith, a Piggly Wheelie.
Piggly Wheelie, yeah.
This is long before Walmart, so, you know, you probably grew up in an era where the meat trucks came to the neighborhood.
Yeah.
Well, we had, I remember they had a dude who was Swan's truck or something.
Yeah.
And this dude would roll through, and this dude honestly was banging some ladies, bro.
I don't know how this guy was a real Casanova, bro.
You know what I'm saying?
And the second he saw the kids, he would be all pissed and stuff, you could tell.
But he was, yeah, they had everything in there, like frozen things of cookies and beef.
He had the beef area.
You had to get in the beef area.
The beef area, I remember when you opened that bitch up, it was like, it was so cold in there as a child, you couldn't even look in there for long.
He was afraid to even look at the beef.
And then they came through with a little Chinese food portal at one point, and that's when I think the people I was living with at the time, they cut it off, man.
They said, we're not doing all of that shit.
Yeah, well, at that point, it wasn't far away from being food trucks in that era.
Yeah, it was like an early food truck, but you had to cook it.
Yeah, for sure.
No, but yeah, Big Beaufort, my grandfather would just pull up with a, and he did nothing but pork.
It was just sausage.
It was a Deford sausage company.
It was a family recipe.
We still have it to this day.
And my father was entrepreneurial, so he was like, I want to sell more than pork.
So he got into poultry and beef as well.
And he was like, instead of taking it door to door, change with the times, I'm not just going to service door to door in the small piggly wigglies and buy rights.
I'm going to start going to local barbecue pits and local restaurants that were local owned and local red.
And, you know, he sold meat that way and housed his own meat.
My brother now, my oldest brother, the one that was more of a hip-hop head, he's still in the meat business.
He's still in the meat business too.
Yeah.
Oh, dude, it's still, you know, and it tickles me pink because it's like my dad's still here.
I'll go hang out with my brother and all his meat salesman friends.
It's funny how that business is generational that way because most of them guys, your meat's daddy was in the meat business.
A lot of businesses are.
Yeah, it's crazy.
A lot of the police officers, boat captains, a lot of things are it just comes down through the family line.
I was the only one that had a vision outside of anything like that.
My other brother ended up doing a survey.
He's a land surveyor and does all that kind of stuff.
He's like into engineering and stuff, civil engineering.
Yeah, I actually got my degree in urban planning, bro.
In urban planning?
Yeah, I'm an urban planner, I guess.
I mean, I am, I don't know, I don't know if my license is active or whatever.
I don't know if I ever got a license, but I am, I guess I'm legally an urban planner, I guess.
I mean, I got the, you know, I did it.
You know, I think it's mostly about, I mean, I know what it's about.
It's about neighborhoods.
Like if you have to have like, say you're putting together a neighborhood and somebody needs, you need to know where the post box, post office box is going or like if a mail truck is coming through, how to get it through, like the, you know, give it the best directions.
Right, right.
Yeah, he deals with the like, can you build here?
Is this a floodland?
Or, you know, shit like that.
But yeah, I'm the only one that even took to like something artist-driven or creative-minded at all.
So when did it start to like really take shape or something?
Or what do you think kind of, did you have some pitfalls or something?
Like, what was it like in your teen years growing up?
Because I know you got into some trouble, right?
Yeah, yeah, I got into a little trouble.
So the other side of my father that was the side that I seen the most more than the hard-working salesman was, he was a hustler.
Yeah.
So my father booked bets on the side most of his life.
You know, it's part of a story that he didn't tell because later in life he went on to marry a fucking Methodist minister and totally different dude than the dude I grew up with, you know, which I love both versions of him.
But I grew up with the old gangster that booked bets.
You know, I grew up on a bar stool with him booking bets.
And what bets on anything?
Football game, all kinds of stuff.
He ran like the old school football cards.
Yeah, I remember.
So he wasn't just like a gambler.
He was the dude who booked them.
So he'd drop off football cards to like Stanley Street Bar and Larry's in Antioch and TGI Friday's in Antioch when it first opened up and like all these local bars.
He would run football cards to them.
He'd take phone bets to parlays and, you know, flattered.
I remember the card.
I remember my buddy's dad worked over at like a Ford dealership, right?
And he'd come home.
Sometimes he'd give us a car.
You know, we could, you know, we'd put five, $6 on it or something.
That's from $5 or $6 was a lot.
It's a big deal.
Yeah, especially for you just to be guessing if it's going to work.
And, you know, he made a deal with all of us brothers when we were younger that, you know, he said, I'll give you a choice.
I'll either pay you per football card that you put out or I won't pay you per football card and I'll let you share in the revenue of it.
So his thing was like, either you can take this risk and make more money with me or I'll just give you a flat fee for every X amount of dollars per football card you put in the streets.
So, he kind of taught us that work ethic, and it was fun to watch the brothers because you have some that played it safe, you know, and then you had the Me's, and that's when he knew something was going to be different.
Me and another brother, we had some cousins that played it safe.
Me and all the brothers went for the risky.
Y'all risky.
Me and all brothers were like, no, fuck that.
We're going for it.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, we're putting it all in a lot.
We're trying to upsell people on bets, you know, and trying to figure it out.
So I always had that hustler in me.
And then when mom and dad divorced, I stayed with mama.
You know what I'm saying?
Because I felt like she was the one that needed me.
Yeah.
Which, you know, in hindsight, as a kid, I should have never, you know, I should have went with where, I should have went with what I needed, not what I thought somebody else needed.
But that just shows your nature as a human, probably.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I love my mom.
I thought my mama needed me.
So I was like, okay, now I got to be the, and I didn't learn enough about football.
You know, who's, I was fucking 14, like 15, 16 years old.
I can't go book bets.
Yeah.
So I was like, well, I'll just do that, right?
Yeah.
It's like, I'll just fucking, you know, I'll go, you know, whatever.
I'll just go find alternate means of money.
And for that, it was, you know, drugs and drugs normally lead to robbing.
And, you know, just goofy shit as a kid.
I just got in a lot of trouble.
I ended up in juvenile for a lot of years.
And the juvenile years rolled over.
And because I went to juvenile, you know, I think the first time when I was like 13 or 14 and just kind of went to that revolving door, ended up in the juvenile penitentiary.
Ended up in group homes, kept running from them.
What was that penitentiary like?
Was it pretty, anything you miss about it?
Dude, no.
Fuck no, man.
I tell people all the time, jail, prison, all that stuff, dude, is when people are like, I love when dudes are like, I just talked to Uncle Joey about this, old Joey Coco.
And we were talking about how some dudes go to prison enough that they start talking about them like they're malls.
You know what I mean?
Like, yeah, that one actually had really good food.
And yo, you know, that one had the prettiest guards.
And I'm like, this ain't a fucking mall.
They all sucked.
That one had an American eagle.
Like, my best memory in jail sucks compared to my worst memory at home.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, when they're like, what was the best day you ever had in jail?
It's like, I came back and the whole unit threw me a birthday party.
I was working in the kitchen and I came in and everybody had like put all their snacks together and they'd set up a big jelly roll birthday party because I was going home soon.
So it was like a going away birthday party.
And as much as my soul was touched for all these fucking gangbangers and criminals to celebrate me, it sucked.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like, you know, like the worst birthday I've ever had at home.
Yeah.
Fucking swamped that one.
You know what I'm saying?
Google Surprise Party in Prison and see what comes up.
I didn't want to get an image in my head.
And did they have any, let's get a couple images there.
Let's see some.
Yeah, let's see if this even pops up.
Let's see.
Oh, there's probably a band called it.
I'm sure there is.
That's the problem nowadays.
You Google anything and there's some shitty band named after it.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, we're not getting much.
No, we didn't have camera phones in there.
There's a cake right there.
Click on that cake.
Yeah, happy birthday, Jamal.
Now, imagine if somebody made that.
Yo, Jamal, happy birthday.
You know, the best part of that is if they would have made that out of honey buns, it'd be realistic, right?
That'd be some stuff because, you know, you get a canteen in there and stuff.
Oh, because y'all had to make bootleg cakes, huh?
Yeah, oh, dude.
But I tell you what, because of that, my fat-ass can whip boy, I can make something out of next to nothing.
Now, so you'd be in there, like, what was your space in the penitentiary environment?
What kind of guy were you?
Were you just kind of the guy making everybody laugh?
Were you kind of a hardhead or what kind of.
No, dude, I was just, dude, I guess I probably made people laughed and entertained.
We did freestyle Fridays, and I worked in the kitchen, and, you know, yeah, I was just there, dude.
My young juvenile years, I was more of a hardhead because I was the only white guy there, and I felt like I had a point to prove, so I was, you know, whatever.
And did they ever let you say the N-word or not?
You know what's crazy is that is a word in which context, right?
Because there's one way in which you're never allowed to say it.
Right.
No matter what.
Yeah, yeah.
And then the other way, you know, there's certain white guys that, yeah, for sure, in different, different penitentiaries and prisons and jails.
Every now and then, somebody, yeah, for sure.
They'll let you get away with it.
You just want to make sure you don't have a neighbor recording you or nothing, you know?
Yeah.
That stuff will stick with you.
You know what I'm saying?
Shout out to our boy.
No, I'm just joking.
I'm Libby Bubble.
But, you know, it's like you want to make sure that, yeah, no, they don't, you know, it's different, man.
And it's also different per jail.
Every jail and every prison and everything has a different structure.
You know, it gets way more racist in federal prison than in state prison.
And especially like county jails is a totally different world because you know everybody.
When you go to the county jail, there's like a degree of separation between you and everybody in the county jail.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, because it's local.
It's all local.
Like worst case scenario, you're from North Nashville.
We're two minutes away from me dropping somebody's name in North Nashville that we both know.
You know what I mean?
The other problem with that is it's a lot of real drama in there, though.
Like where guys have been like, I have been waiting to run into you because you had a problem with my cousin.
You know, whatever years.
Oh, yeah, that's really, that's really the real confluence of the local bullshit.
Yeah, where it's like in the federal scale, there's no way me and a dude in Wisconsin ever have a personal problem with each other.
Right, right.
Where, you know, the county jail, I had a lot of personal problems with people.
And what about a lot of gays in there?
Any type of activity like that?
A lot of gay activity?
When you get to like prison, prison, you start having dudes that are, you know, busting their butt open.
Yeah.
But the county jail, that's not happening.
I spent more time in the county jail than the big prison.
So because I was more of a revolving door kind of criminal.
Go for a year or two, come home, go for a year or two, come home.
I was just like a, I was that guy.
Yeah, like, oh, he's back.
You know what I'm saying?
That was kind of like a bad thing.
Like somebody that winters in Florida like that kind of thing.
Yeah, exactly.
Fucking totally right.
Like a guy that goes to losers, you know, once every two weeks or winners.
Oh, yeah.
I was a red door kind of guy.
You know, it's like I was just, oh, he's back.
And those are local ballers.
People don't know that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Supernational talk, y'all.
So what about, so when, so when you kind of got, when music kind of got, kind of took over your life, did that have an effect?
Like, tell me kind of how you got, how did you get into the music, Dan?
I was just, I started writing raps young Just because I didn't think I had a cool voice to sing, you know, and nobody in the family sang to teach me to sing.
So I would write like raps, and that was obviously like I don't know how much of that we caught earlier, but that was the language of the community.
Hip-hop was the language of the neighborhood, you know, a super mixed community.
I grew up like you, you know what I'm saying?
Like a super.
A poor neighborhood, man.
It's really because black shit is cool usually.
So it's like black shit always is the cool shit.
Right, 100%.
No, it's to this day, hip-hop has influenced every genre of music on earth, whether people want to admit it or not.
I hear it the most in country music.
I mean, I hear hip-hop melodies, hip-hop drums, 808s.
That is just so prevalent in country music.
But, you know, hip-hop was the language of the community.
So that was kind of what I got into first.
And I'd freestyle at tables.
And in juvenile, I'd freestyle battle people.
And I tell this story.
It's my favorite story to tell about my father.
I was getting bound over as a juvenile and charged as an adult.
I had made a decision as a child that they warranted me being charged as an adult.
And I ended up with that felony on my record for a crime I committed at 16. To this day, I can't get rid of that felony.
And when they bound me over, the only good thing that happened was I got a bond.
I'm 17 years old.
I'm going to the county jail.
They let me call one person when I get to the county jail.
And who was it?
Pops.
100% of the time I'm calling my dad.
I'm calling him.
He answered.
Man, that was my guy.
The dude supported me more than that.
I can tell you buddy stories until I'm blue in the face.
He was the most supportive dude of my wild shit of anybody.
When I wanted to quit music probably five, six years ago, I sat down with him seven years ago and I was like, Pops, I'm just, I'm not, it's not going to work.
I was sitting at the 10 roof, a bar right on the Mummer Street, that they have a plaque with his name in there.
He was a legend at this spot.
Yeah, this is Nashville.
Yeah, this is a super beautiful spot right on the Mumbai.
You ever come through, swing through?
And they serve everything out of plastic.
Oh, it's a beautiful, it's not the term I would use for it, but it is a good spot.
The higher floors you go, it gets extremely sticky until you get, you can't even leave, I don't think, the fourth floor.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, you're talking about the Broadway one, though.
Oh, yeah.
I'm an old school OG De Mumbrian, right?
Oh, okay, that's one that's right there in the.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That one is nice.
Yeah, and everything's served out of plastic, which was fucking what my dad thought was the greatest because he'd take a drink to go with him every day.
You believe in stem cells?
I don't know anything about them, dude.
Hell, you've way beyond my pay grade of intelligence at this point.
I want to get hair plugs.
Is that close to the same thing or not?
No, you're doing fine, I think, on the hair, man.
I'm hurting up.
Listen, man, my fear in life is balding.
Is it?
I can't be fat and bald.
You know what I'm saying?
Listen, dog, when you're fat, you got to pick struggles very intelligently, Theo.
Really?
Yeah, man.
I don't get to be.
You know, you can have a kind of a smelly day and get away with it because you're an old handsome fucker.
Not me.
Damn.
If I'm fat and smelly, it sticks forever.
I got to make sure I am smelling my drugs.
If you wake up and forget deodorant, it's like, oh, a little musty.
I'll wake up and forget deodorant.
That'll log down.
That's a damn ecosystem, huh?
It will follow me like pigpens.
Oh, you're like Charles on the north side, man.
I can't be fat and bald, man.
Yeah.
Yeah, because you're a bigger guy, man.
What's it like being bigger?
Well, you got to make sure every chair won't hurt you or break you.
You look first, huh?
Well, you've got to give it the test.
You know what I'm saying?
For sure.
You got to ease into it.
Yeah, man.
Damn, I don't think about that kind of stuff.
And were you always a big guy since you were young?
Yeah, dude.
I was fat as a kid, man.
I've just always struggled with like, and I think it's a part of my personal mental health struggles, right?
We all have our own things and our own demons and vices.
And for me, I could literally go on a three-day cocaine bender right now and wake up on the fourth day and be like, well, that was a lot of fun and not do it again for weeks or months, you know?
But dude, you fucking set some snacks out somewhere and don't let me hover around them more than two or three minutes.
I'll start filling my pockets up like I'm in jail and I'm never going to see them again.
You know what I'm saying?
Like for sure.
You want them snacks, yeah.
Yeah, I'm all about snacks.
Do you, does it scare you your way?
Does it worry you?
Yeah, all the time, dude.
I don't want to be this fat.
Hell, I don't want people comment on who he's going to die.
It's going to happen for sure.
You know what I mean?
Oh, damn, bro.
I mean, it might be me right now, too.
I got a couple ghost accounts.
A couple of ghost accounts.
You know, it's like, you don't want to go through that.
And I'm on the, I got a nutritionist now.
I've been working on working on my weight this year more than I have in a long time.
But I also don't worry about as much as I should because I've been on this roller coaster my whole life where I'm a little more plump right now.
But I can show you pictures when I was less plump and I can show you pictures when I was more plump.
I just kind of, you know, it's kind of part of what I deal with, just trying to get on the other side of the mountain.
Do you feel like, well, two questions.
Have you ever tried any of like, because I know they do a lot of those surgeries and stuff.
Have you ever done anything like that where they like get into your system or whatever?
Yeah, I'm just not with that.
Don't, you know, I'm not going to, I don't know, man.
Don't fuck, I don't want to get cut on and all that old shit.
Yeah.
Yeah, I just don't know what people do, you know?
You know what the most selfish thing I can say right now is, but it's real?
I've heard when you do the surgery, it fucks with your ability to intake anything, which I would love for that to be the case with food.
But like, they were like, well, you can't drink more than a half gallon of water a day on it or it'll make you sick.
What?
Like, I don't want to spend my life.
I'd rather die young.
Yeah.
Not young like this, but like, you know, than have to measure my water.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, just little stuff.
Yeah, when they started explaining some of the stuff to me, because I went and talked to the dude, you know what I mean?
Like, there's not a fat person on earth that can afford the surgery that hasn't at least went and talked to the person about the surgery.
Yeah.
You know, and when he started explaining it to me, I was just like, and he was honest enough too.
He's like, look, man, I think that if you just put your mind to it, you'll lose the weight again.
It's been proven that you can lose the weight.
What hasn't been proven is that I can keep the weight off.
So that's what we got to figure out next.
That's such a struggle for so many people, man.
You know, I don't know what that's like.
I know what a struggle is like, but I don't know what that struggle is like.
Do you feel, though, also, you're so recognizable as this like larger than life character?
Do you feel like being larger, you almost have to be larger?
No, dude, it's like, I think the real side of it is it's a decision to live, and I'm just starting to make that decision.
I spent most of my life if I live or not.
Just not giving a fuck.
I feel that.
I tell people to this day, like when I really start to get angry, I've had to have this moment with a few grown men in my life where I'm like, dog, do I look like somebody that cares?
Like, you should really assess that before you talk to me crazy.
Like, I have everything written on my body to show you I don't give a fuck about a lot.
You know what I mean?
And it's like, I'm just starting to give a fuck.
Like, I'm just looking at my 14-year-old daughter.
Like, I used to be like, if I could just live till she's 18, I'd be okay.
Now I'm starting to be like, I'd like to meet my grandkids, I think.
Yeah.
You know, it's like you're starting to think about shit you didn't think about before.
Isn't that kind of magical when those ideas come in your head that think make you believe you care about yourself?
Yes, that's insane.
It's little stuff that's like, I think I do want to meet my grandchildren.
Yeah.
So that's what made me hire a nutritionist.
Before it was like a chore to be like, I just want to stay alive till she's 18 so I don't create any more unnecessary trauma in her life.
You know what I'm saying?
And then it's like, you know, it was about her.
And then it's kind of like selfishly now it's about me.
It's like, I don't know, man, I kind of want to hang out with the grandkids.
I kind of want to kind of want to see where this thing ends up with her.
Yeah.
I want to see what Jelly, yeah, when Jelly starts to kind of coagulate, I want to be there.
Yeah, for sure.
I want to kind of look because like now she's cool enough at 14 that I'm like, dude, I bet she's going to kick ass at 25. I want to see that.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, oh, dude, she's going to be a whole different human at 35. Fuck, I didn't know my ear from my asshole at 25. Wait till she's 35. I'm like, fuck, I got to live for 30 years, not 20. You know what I mean?
Like, oh, God, damn.
Damn, I'm going to have to fucking stay alive.
I'm going to have to do a push-up or something.
You know what I'm saying?
What up?
How did you get a child?
Oh, dude, complete accident.
Really?
Yeah, man, for sure.
And was it like a one-night stand deal?
No, no, no.
I was on and off with the girl for a long time, man.
Well, until one of my cycles of jail, I had Bailey when I was in jail.
Okay.
You know what I mean?
Was kind of my thing.
And did you, was it your first girlfriend?
Was she the mother of the child?
Yeah, well, not my first girlfriend, but, you know, one of my earlier, girlier girlfriends.
Believe it or not, to be a big fella, I've always fancied myself with women.
Yeah.
I've always, you know...
Your wife is a real...
Yeah, I'm telling you.
Fucking front yams, baby.
She is a stacked deck.
And she is a fucking sweetheart of a woman.
My gosh.
And she's a fucking pit bull when she needs to be.
I married a full-blown German Shepherd.
She mixes the pot perfectly.
But I've always, my wife tells people this is like, I love her when she gets with people.
One, they're like, she's a gold digger.
Like, I was piss broke when I met Bunny.
She financially supported me for years.
Yeah.
Two.
And Bunny is his wife's name.
And Bunny got them rabbits.
Yeah, yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
Mr. McGregor's gone for sure.
For sure.
Motherfucker want to give her the carrot.
Yeah.
But and then she'll tell people too, like, dude, I'm not the first bad bitch my husband's ever fucked.
Like, she's the first person to tell people, like, I've always fancied, you know, a good conversation with a knife lady.
Yeah.
So that wasn't.
So the girl I had a kid with wasn't my first one.
She was just the first one that the pull-out technique didn't work with.
Oh, really?
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Damn.
I got a son, too.
He's almost six.
Oh, really?
With the bunny?
No, no, no, different relationship.
They kind of coexided there, but I just, this girl was pregnant.
We wasn't together, and I didn't really know much about the situation with the pregnancy.
Like, you know, whatever.
Yeah.
I knew she was pregnant.
I knew it was mine, but we wasn't together at the time.
She got pregnant.
And me and Bunny started courting each other.
Yeah.
It's a longer story.
But yeah.
It's not my favorite story to tell.
But yeah, I got a son, too, and he's cool as fuck.
What about that first girlfriend?
You remember that one?
Her first kiss.
Take me there, man.
Take me on a little bit of that adventure.
Oh, dude, it was the girl across the street.
She always is that.
Was she a girl across the street, too?
I think it was, dude.
They had this girl across the street from me that had that Lloyd Christmas on her, bro.
She was chipped out.
You know what I'm saying?
Oh, dude.
She had that sand wedge right there.
That's kind of cute, though.
Oh, I thought it was.
I'd never seen it.
You know, it was just damn beautiful.
Her tooth had that damn calyk, you know.
And some people locked us in a room, some adults and, you know, perverts, really.
And they were like watching through the door and yelling, kiss and fuck, you know.
And we didn't know anything about it, man.
And she was the cutest girl, Chrissy was her name.
So we just kissed, you know.
Chrissy?
I think that was my first kiss.
And then there was another time, this beautiful girl, we were playing spin the bottle, dude.
And I don't even know.
I was so scared to even sit at this circle.
We were sitting in the circle.
And for years, I remembered thinking we were sitting around a fire.
And then I just remembered that's how scared I was.
I felt like there was a fire in front of me because there was a chance there could be a kiss.
And this girl named Emily, man, the bottle stopped on her.
And I always thought like somewhere like in the last chasm or whatever of my heart that she thought about me or thought, you know, thought I was, you know, a trial or whatever.
I don't know.
And she got to pick whoever she wanted on the circle, dude.
And she came over to me and fucking the fire guys.
You know, people were throwing logs on the fire.
I'm just so scared.
And I remembered seeing on television, I think on Magnum P.I., somebody kissed somebody with their mouth open, you know?
And so that's, so she comes in to kiss me.
And I just remember this being like, like opening my mouth up real wide, you know, and everybody laughed at me.
And she still tried to kiss me kind of, but it was just fucking embarrassing.
But anyway, man, what happened to you?
Wasn't that cool?
It was a girl.
She hurts a little, dude.
I seen the pain.
I felt bad for a second.
It was a girl across the street.
Her name was Krista Hayes.
Krista Renee Hayes.
Renee, dude, I'll tell you this.
Every poor kid, their middle name, the girl is Renee.
Fucking Renee.
It is it not?
No, for sure.
I got two nieces from the same mother, and both of them's middle names are Renee.
Renee.
No, those families have middle names.
Like ours is Anne.
I dated two girls that had the middle name Anne, and my daughter then had the middle name Ann.
Yeah.
So it's fucking, it's that.
My grandmother's name was Margaret Elizabeth Ann or Margaret Ann.
But Renee's that poor, Renee's poor white middle daughter.
For sure, yeah.
It's just got a, it's kind of it feels rashly dashly, yeah, Krista Renee Hayes, especially her name was Hayes, so I thought the nay in Hayes was cool.
Krista Renee Hayes, yeah, yeah, she was my first kiss, man.
She was a little blonde girl across the street, and God, she was like, she was cute as a button, dude.
She was a little B thing, and she was awesome.
That was my first kiss.
My first blowjob was outside of a girl's group home.
Oh, yeah, I could see that.
Yeah, right?
I could eat that.
The dude's group home and the girls' group home was by each other.
Yeah.
And what happened?
You snuck over there or whatever?
Yeah, but we used to meet outside and hang out because we were allowed to hang out outside.
And then one day we went over by the house where the air conditioning.
Air conditioning unit, bro.
Yeah, right there by the air conditioning unit.
Why don't air conditioning units advertise you can get blown behind?
They're your best, dude.
Dude, the noise kind of, you know, keeps you feel like more cover.
Yeah, and if you fuck on top of it, it kind of shakes and it gives off a little like hot air.
Oh.
Like that's what we needed.
You know how the thing is up top?
It's like a stove thing kind of on top of it that blows a little hot air.
Oh, yeah.
It is kind of sexy.
But I went over there.
I got my first blowjob, and I knew right then that that was fucking the greatest thing ever.
Oh, you was into blowjobs at that point?
Oh, dude, listen.
I mean, I knew that I was excited to get the pussy, and it was a little letdown compared to what the blowy was.
Oh, yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
So fucking ever since then, it's kind of, you know, the other thing's almost a chore.
It's like, oh, we got to do that.
Yeah, there's something interesting about somebody being willing to admit they're willing to put their face on your penis.
Yeah, for absolute truth.
Until the point of it spitting.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
That whole shit is just when you hit pure.
Yeah, there's, you know, I remember this gal tried to give me a BJ.
And I mean, once, well, a couple times.
One time I was at a party.
We were going to sneak off into the woods.
And the woods, we didn't know it was swampland, right?
So we're back there 30, 40 yards into these woods.
And it's like that.
Remember that movie Artex and the Swamp of Sadness?
It's just, damn, we're up to our necks.
And damn, I mean, leeches.
I mean, who knows?
I mean, there's no potential.
I mean, Mother Nature's blowing me at this point.
Something's blowing me.
You know what I'm saying?
It's thick.
This is where you're from.
It could have legit been a goddamn alligator.
It could have been anything, bro.
It could have been a toothless alligator, boy.
You know what I'm saying?
Humming nub down there.
Toothless.
But I'll tell you this, man.
So we couldn't do it because of weather, you know, logistics.
Right.
So then two or three weeks later, there's another party.
So y'all had a rain delay.
Oh, yeah.
Rescheduled the game for sure.
Think about it.
You're finna get your first blowjob.
Ref calling it off.
The game gets called off.
And I mean, it was the bare grills of, you know, we were out in the, you know, it was damn, it was, I was getting hungry.
That's how long I was out there.
So then the next time there was another party, and me and her snuck outside, and she starts to give me some type of a blowjob or something.
And the girl whose house it is, the mom, comes out from behind a tree, dude.
And we're right there.
And she's like, what's going on?
And I didn't know what to say.
You're like, you know what's going on, lady.
And I felt like she kind of should have known, you know, but I remember just saying that this girl was washing my penis.
I remember saying.
And the mom looked at me like I was such an asshole for saying that.
And I said it off the tip of my tongue.
I thought it wasn't that bad of a thing to say.
And she made us go back to the party.
She's just like, you guys go back to the party.
Oh, she didn't even get to enjoy it.
She got rained out the first time and got fucking the flag on the play the second time.
And then some guy at school beat me up and stole her from me.
No, you got to do it.
Because he heard she was giving blowjobs.
Oh, fuck.
So damn, man.
God, the worst feeling in the world is getting your ass kicked about a piece of pussy you didn't get.
You know what I'm saying?
Fuck, man.
Oh, man.
Man, that time was fun, man.
God, it was fun.
No, I still remember my first Hummer.
It was fucking absolutely awesome.
It was a thing.
I still remember her name, too.
It was Anita.
Oh, yeah, really?
Oh, yeah.
Anita is an interesting name.
Yeah, it was another one of those names.
Spanish lady?
No, no, she was all-American, purebred, white trash, like myself.
Amen.
Yeah, Anita.
I can see that being, that's very much, I can see that being like also a white, kind of white trash name.
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So then how did the music really start to pop up?
When did that start to really bloom in your life, you know?
When I was incarcerated the last time, all stories go back to this, sadly.
Now, were you behind bars, actually, or you're just like in a little room with a door?
Well, depending on the job.
I always wondered that.
Every jail's different.
They have some that are actually like barred.
You prefer the bars or the door?
A door.
A little more privacy.
You know, there's a little peep window there.
You know what I mean?
A little pie flap.
They'll hand you food through if you're locked down or something.
And did y'all have any sports groups in there?
Is it related to that?
Yeah, I boxed whenever I was young.
And it's my love for fighting.
And still, like, as a fight family boxing fan, we had a program at one of the facilities.
And they had basketball courts at Mosum.
But you know what I'm really good at because of juvenile?
I'm fucking Forrest Gump with a ping-pong paddle, Theo.
Really?
Dude, I could be an Olympian.
It's crazy.
I fucking fuck Forest up.
I haven't played in years.
Anytime we get drunk and find a ping-pong table, I just goddamn go in there.
Steal it, huh?
Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow.
I look like fucking the fat Serena Williams.
Just fucking moving, baby.
Just I can fucking play ping pong, dude.
Because I wasn't good enough to get on the basketball court with all the black guys.
So, you know, I just held court at the ping pong table in juvenile.
And I like that.
That was my thing.
But, yeah, but I was the last time I was in jail, jail.
Yeah.
And I knew that Bailey was born while I was incarcerated.
That's my daughter.
That's my oldest.
That's my oldest older.
And did that bang you up?
Yeah, I mean, it fucked with me.
You know what I'm saying?
It was like, it was the most first moment where I realized I couldn't be selfish.
So I was like selfish as far as like I had a reason to live outside of self because I tell people all the time, without purpose, Jason D. Ford will drive him.
He's a train that's destined to wreck.
Yeah.
Right?
It's purpose that drives me every day.
It's providing for my daughter.
It's making music that helps people.
It's helping friends.
It's building stuff bigger than myself because I put so little value into myself, obviously.
Right.
So at that moment, I was like, I got to do something.
I can't.
I don't want to be an absent father.
I had a very present father.
I didn't want to be an absent father.
And I was like, I need to, you know, I need to stand up and do something here.
And my skill sets are still to this day utterly fucking limited.
Minimum.
I mean, y'all, dude, I'm not good at much.
I mean, ping pong and songs and talking shit a little bit.
And that fucking, and there it stops.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like, yeah, that is a short list.
Yeah, I'm not going to win a talent show or anything like that if I had to do something other than what I do now.
And I was like, man, music's got to be it.
So I came home and started putting out mixtapes.
I tell you where I got fucking.
Can I ask him to pull up something?
Can I have a pull-up something moment?
Pull up Jelly Roll 10 Minute Freestyle.
My buddy Chad Arms recorded this, and he had like a Sony flip cam or something when I first got out.
And yep, right there.
And this is the second or third time we put it up, right?
So this particular video was early, early to it.
We put this up in 16, but I actually had it up before from in like 2000 or 90. That's me fresh out.
I mean, when I say fresh out of jail, like I had just got that haircut.
My homeboy had just bought me that shirt.
I can tell that this is very near a halfway house because that guy in the hustler shirt is always with, he's always in the background of every halfway house.
Yes, no, for sure, dude.
That guy, Frank, or whatever his name is.
I mean, I know he's not.
He's probably a Frank.
Smokle T-Shock.
Is he really?
He's like a Frank.
I get the theme.
But dude, that dude is a little bit more.
This is like that kind of a thing for sure.
Like, you know, I'm fresh out.
The lady I was with at the time bought me a phone.
This is how old this was.
I referenced the phone because in the Freddy Man and Freestyle, I say, your baby mama loved me.
Been out of jail for a week and got a touchscreen.
It was like a big deal to have a touchscreen phone back then, for me at least.
This was like two, the first time it came out was in 2008.
Let's see that shit.
run it up.
So this is it, right?
If you ever got 10 minutes to blow, it's worth watching.
I was just like fresh out of jail with a lot to say.
And we uploaded it in 2008 when I 2000.
No, my fault, 2009, when I first got home.
And where does all that come from?
So how do you get to this place, though?
I see that, you know, like your mother had issues.
She probably maybe had some type of alcoholism or something.
You know, you said that she had some issues, right?
Right, right.
But how do you get to be this guy?
You know?
Hip-hop.
I was just rapping everywhere I went, dude.
I was in the county jail hole in court, dude.
I had guards that would take me to different units to freestyle mad people.
Before Eminem did the Eight Mile movie, I was living the Eight Mile movie.
Wow.
Right?
In jail.
Dude, I had a guy named Jazz Howard.
Shout out to Jazz Howard from Crosstracks.
He would take me to different barbershops and different projects in Nashville and bet $10,000 cash.
I could out-rap any rapper in that project.
So, you know, the local barbershop would like send somebody to the neighborhood real quick, like, shoot over there and grab such and such.
And then such and such.
Grab a ducky.
I'd fuck him up.
I'd light his ass on fire.
Grab mouse, mouse.
Dude, Jazz, give me a couple grand.
I was like, fucking, yeah.
Like, I was like in jail.
Back to the jail story.
When I come home, dad bails me out.
I call dad.
I say, dad, I need you to come bail me out.
I said, I'm going to pay you back.
They got a freestyle battle Sunday at this club.
I need to borrow $100 so I can enter it.
I need you to bail me out.
Give me $100 and I'm going to go enter this and I'm going to win $1,000.
He didn't blink.
He was like, yeah, whatever.
Go do it.
And they had to sneak me in because I wasn't old enough to get in.
It was Sunday night, out of limits.
Eric McInalley, Joseph Herbert are running the promotional company there.
They sneak me in.
I go in, win $1,000 right then.
You must have been.
Came home, showed my pops.
He's like, hell yeah, son.
And I was like, listen, I'm going to go back and win it again next week.
They did it for 10 weeks.
For nine weeks, I went in there and won.
$1,000 every time.
True fucking story.
I lost one week out of 10. And what cost you that one week?
You know who beat me?
Who was it?
This is going to fuck y'all up.
You ever seen my boy Kyle Hill on Broadway with the drums?
He sits on Broadway and raps.
Oh, and downtown Nashville?
Right downtown Nashville on Broadway.
You got to go see him.
He's there every weekend.
He sets a drum kit up in front of merchants and he beats and he freestyles while people are walking by, right?
And he makes a living doing this.
Wow.
He's the dude that beat me.
He's the one dude that beat me and I'm still friends with him to this day.
He's on Instagram as Broadway Rapper, but he's my boy.
And to this day, he's the only one that beat me.
Yeah, but I went and did that.
I've just always been into rap.
So I came home from jail, uploaded this.
It fucking went viral back then.
We had to take it down because I have a line in there that says in my PO ask, I hang drywall.
And my PO Made me take it down.
She was like, We're going to violate your probation.
You're making a mockery of the state of Tennessee.
She like scolded me, and I had to take it down.
So we put it up many years later, but it went what they called viral back then, early, early YouTube, dude.
When you had to go, you when you could only get to YouTube from a hard computer.
Yeah.
You know, you didn't have a laptop.
You had to go to desktop, type in www.youtube.com.
You got to write it all the way out.
Yeah, all the way.
You had to hit the W's on there.
You know, it was a thing.
So what up, so now, so now you're at the spot, though, where you have the number five song.
Yes, sir.
And on the rock.
Rock radio, yes, sir.
On rock radio.
Yes, sir.
So how do you get from where you were then to now?
Like, what kind of happened?
Take me through some more of it.
I fell in love with songwriting through the process of writing raps.
I immediately, I was boxed into being a freestyle rapper.
Okay.
And I was like, I don't want to be known for that.
So I started writing like songs.
And all of my choruses were really soulful.
And I'd rap the verses.
I had a song called, you pull up Jelly Roll Riding All Alone?
And I had this record called Riding All Alone.
And it was really slow.
And me and Lil White, first of all, Lil White from 36 Mafia.
You probably remember Oxyton, Samuel, Perker, Sesson Lure, Tabs.
Still one of my best friends to this day.
And when I first came home from Jane.
You're a bit from Memphis, huh?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's Memphis as fuck, too.
When I first came home from jail, we did a song together, and Juicy J and DJ Paul ended up 36 Mafia producing an album with me whiting a guy named P Peasy.
But outside of the first song I put out with him, I started putting out these super like soulful joints like this.
Maybe go to like the minute mark or something.
I just want you to hear the chorus so you can kind of get a feel for where I'm coming from here.
And see, this was released in 2010.
This is just the life I live in.
Right here.
Watch this.
Check this out.
I be riding all alone.
I just be riding all alone.
You stop right there, Harry.
But it's like, baby.
Yeah, but it's like this, you know, 12, 13 years ago, right?
Because if it went down, that would be good.
That would be good now.
I mean, that's good now.
Yeah.
So then.
I didn't realize I was singing that chorus, right?
You know what I mean?
Like, I didn't register to me that I was singing because I wouldn't like open up and sing it.
You know what I mean?
So I just kind of did this like talk-sing thing because I wasn't confident in my voice.
So I've kind of always knew, and this is something else I'm glad I got to show this to a platform as big as yours because the therapeutic music that I make now that's so personal has always been my approach to music.
Like when you listen to that, I'm talking about doctors said if I don't quit living like this, I won't live to see 35. I just keep on smoking like fucking, I'm prepared to die.
I've always wrote from that kind of dark perspective, you know?
Yeah, because I'll listen to Save Me sometimes when I need to feel how sometimes I'm too busy, I notice, or too caught up to really just get my own feelings out.
Right.
And so I'll listen to Save Me just to so somebody else can do it for me almost in a weird way.
You know, a lot of times I can get them, but sometimes you can't.
No, that's the beautiful thing of music, man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Music is the soundtrack of the soul.
And that's how I've always looked at it.
Just like tears are the expression of words we can't articulate.
And I'd look at music as being the soundtrack to the soul.
So I've always wanted to make music that would help people.
That song is a great example.
That song is fucking 13, 14 years old.
So I always, so the transition has been very slow.
It seems like it happened quick for the unseen eye because guys are like, dude, it's crazy.
You're on rock radio, which is fucking crazy to me too.
But the idea that like, you know, we've always leaned that way.
I just didn't know I could sing.
Five, six years ago, I started like really singing.
I got drunk and went and sang.
But you got a, you got a, do you got a go-to karaoke song?
Yeah, I do, um, actually, I do rocking around the Christmas tree.
Right.
I do a Christmas carol because I'm not that great of a singer.
And everybody likes it.
Everybody at first is like, fuck this guy, you know, queer, you know?
But then like 10 seconds into it, they're like, you will get a sentence.
You know, or they're like rocking, you know.
Yeah, for sure.
So it's like, nobody could really super hate on a Christmas carol.
So I'll play it a safe bet.
Right.
No, dude, it's awesome.
But what I love about that is I tell people we all secretly have a go-to song we sing in those moments, you know, karaoke thing.
Oh, I wish mine was that Smash and Pumpkins song, bro.
Saw you with this man.
You got me lucky moment.
You know what mine is?
No, that one's good.
Mine is and has always been old-time rock and roll by Bob Sager.
Just take those old records off the shit.
That ain't it, is it?
Oh, that's it.
That's it for sure.
Yeah.
100%, it's crazy, right?
It's like the song that's stuck in every white trash human's mind forever.
But it's, and you forget it's there, and then it pocks its little fucking head out, and you're like, yeah, fucking, I do know that song.
Look, it'll help you finish tea in the kitchen.
I know that shit, bro.
I want to slide around in my socks.
Yeah.
My mom used to put on Brian Adams.
She got one of those cassette tape deals where you give them 30 cents and they send you six cassettes or whatever and then you don't pay them and they sue you, right?
So we had that deal and one of them was Brian Adams.
Yes.
Look into my heart.
Oh, yeah.
And you will see what you mean to.
There we go.
Sing it to us, Steve.
That should be your name.
I can't.
But mine was old-time rock and roll.
And I go out with some business guys one night that I'm working on a production deal with.
Sounds like drugs.
Yeah.
Go on, go on.
Yeah, it's fucking torturous.
And we're all doing karaoke drunk.
And I did Bob Seeger.
And somebody in the group was like, dude, you can really fucking sing.
And I don't know why.
It's all it took for me to be like, maybe I can.
And I just started singing.
I started like really singing, like from my ball sack then.
You know, at first I was just singing from my chest.
Then I started singing from my ass.
That's when I was like, just clench my butt cheeks together and fucking open my Little fucking hips and just fucking go for it.
Like a hound dog.
The problem is, I'm now having to learn how to sing and work backwards from there.
So it's like trying to do the stable stuff, you know what I mean?
Or the inflections of lower stuff is like, it's so fucking hard.
Where it's like, just take those old records off the shelf.
It's so much fucking easier, right?
Than like, I was man.
Yeah, that sounds hard.
I want to say this, though, dude.
What about the lady?
So you got married.
Where'd you meet your wife at?
I know your wife has a wild story.
Oh, dude, my wife is fucking the fucking best.
I met her in Vegas at a show.
And she's beautiful.
Look, I'll say this, beautiful lady.
I've seen her a couple times.
She come in the room.
She ain't looking at me.
She's looking at you.
Oh, dude.
You know, you can tell that wife is dialed into you.
No, that's my girl, man.
She's the sweetest woman on earth.
And I met her in Vegas, and I was really down on my luck.
I was living out of a van.
I was fucking literally.
I was living out of a conversion van.
I was just banned out, huh?
Where were you urinating at?
Oh, dude, just on the side of the freeway.
Same place I was shitting, you know, truck stops.
And, you know, we were doing 250 years.
Oh, dude, Flying J's and Love.
Stay away from TAs.
TAs are the fucking word.
They're the trailer park of truck stops.
I've been saying that, dude.
A friend of mine reached in.
They had a live fishing well or something in there at one of them.
Yeah, fucking shit.
And he got meningitis from the damn tank in there.
But I will say this, though.
He fucking, I do remember he dropped a laughy taffy in that bitch and he reached in and fucking got it.
Fuck it.
Some part of that's on him, baby.
You know what I'm saying, dog?
If you eating candy out of an aquarium at a truck stop, dog, look, the Lord, he gets to do what he wants.
Nothing is trashier than a TA.
If I wake up on the bus and wear the TA, I'm just like, fuck me, man.
How does this happen?
I can't even open my bowels up at a damn TA, bro.
But you get me over to a Flying J, you get me to a Love.
What I love about Loves, dude, if you're using the urinal or the shitter in there, you can shit and hear somebody play Buck Hunter right outside the door.
Oh, for sure, dude.
Pilots are fucking awesome as well.
They're pretty good.
The Apple Barnes or whatever they're called, the West Coast, they're kind of trash.
But yeah, so we were like doing 200 and something shows a year.
Dude, I was open for everybody.
I mean, I went out with the Insane Clown Posse.
The first people that ever took me and Lil White out was a group called Twisted.
They were signed to ICP at the time.
Great dudes, man.
Shout out to them.
Skinny Puppy.
You ever got with them?
No, but I do go out with Mushroom Head, the Metal Band.
They're fucking fire.
I went out with them.
I love a picture of them, Mushroom Head.
Yeah, this is awesome.
Skinny and them.
On this ICP tour one time, I was the first act of five, so I didn't have a dressing room or nothing.
And that means I went on when people were like, you know, still walking in the door and buying popcorn and stuff.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah, it was the worst setup, worst set ever.
And this band invited me, gave me the code to their bus, and they would let me use their bus as my green room.
And I'm forever grateful to Skinny and this band.
To this day, we're friends because they were so good to me.
And dude, I had a 1994 conversion band, like a Southern Comfort high top.
And this 1990 something, 95, 96. We called it Bertha.
And everybody who toured with me back then has Bertha tattooed on them.
Shout out Scary Larry and the crew.
They all have Casey Strums.
Yeah, that's it.
That's my van.
I feel like that white one down there with the high top.
Oh, no, on the left, left.
Left, left, left, right there.
Right.
Yep, the white one.
Boom.
That is fucking Bertha, son.
Wow.
That is big Bertha to a fucking day.
That might be a picture.
Yes, sir, it did.
That might be a picture of my van.
We hung a TV up in it.
Scary Larry and Casey hung up a TV.
Me and Highlight would sit back there and fucking watch fucking old DVDs and stuff.
And the third day, that V Damn homeware rodic, the whole thing.
What are you saying?
Yo, we carried a trailer on it, so the back seat would lay down to a bed, kind of, like a futon or something.
And I lived in that motherfucker, Theo.
Like, shit, when I met my wife, I was like, come, let's smoke a blunt in the van.
And she got in the van, and she said it gave, to this day, she tells the story it gave her anxiety because it was so trashy.
It like smelled like fucking cum and cigarettes.
It was like, you know, fucking six-grown people.
People have been doing coming in there.
Coming in there, cocaine in there.
Fucking, I think some guys were tying their arms off.
It was bad.
We were struggling out there, man.
It was a rough run, dude, for us.
The devil's tug of war.
Yeah, we lived in there.
We called it Bertha, dude.
Everybody's got Bertha tattooed on.
If you toured with me in that era, you got Bertha tattooed on you.
God, shit, dude, that's when touring was so different.
Before smartphones, it was just, you were just at the will of the world.
Oh, dude, $50 a night is what I got paid for like three years straight.
Like $50 a night.
We didn't have enough room to get gas and a hotel.
So it was like, we just had to go fucking park at truck stops and sleep some nights.
We were banging on merch.
We were counting on hand-to-hand CDs and t-shirts.
Dude, how do you used to do them?
I'll tell you this.
So I remember at one point I bought that burner, baby.
Really?
I bought that three-shelf burner, bro.
For the CDs.
I think I was in damn, up near Canada, and somebody run that bitch across the board.
It's still that sweat on the outside of it.
Really?
You're talking about the CD burner, the tower, right?
You burned three CDs at one time.
It took about 19 minutes.
And then we'd put them on a spindle.
I'd handwrite on every fucking one of them.
Dude, I'd write the bags.
And I would sell them right off the spindle.
And I'd make a title of a different title.
Like they were different albums.
No, for sure.
We did that for fun, or we'd autograph them, or have the friend homie autograph some.
It was just like, and we'd sell them off the spindle.
Like, we wouldn't even give you a case for them.
It'd just be like, oops, right off the spindle.
This is yours for $3, you know, or $5 or whatever.
I used to do it for donations in hopes that somebody would give me some more money.
I'd be like, look, man, I'm just fucking, I got $40 to open this show.
I remember a lady one time in Fort Worth, Texas, come up and give me $100.
She's like, my husband just died.
Really?
She gave me $100.
For one of the CDs off the space.
She didn't want the album.
I don't blame her.
Wow.
She was like, I don't really care.
I'm not into your art.
I'm just into your hustle.
I think about how many people bought the CD and never listened to it.
Oh, I think that's the first time you got it.
Like you guys in Manhattan.
I want to say thank you to everybody that bought.
Sometimes I think it was a DVD, dude.
I don't even know what was all that bitch, but I sold them.
And thank you, man.
Yeah, no, for debt.
We did it.
And I was at that phase of my life when I met Bunny and she was like, she adopted a little pound puppy.
And where'd you meet her at?
Where were you guys at?
We were at this bar called the Las Vegas Country Saloon on Fremont Street.
There's a lot of titles in one.
Yeah, it's pretty big.
The Las Vegas Country Saloon and Fremont Street.
And Bunny was doing high-end escort stuff.
She was a sex worker in Vegas.
And she was getting a lot of money.
I mean, she had like a real big plush penthouse.
We had a sex worker on the podcast one time.
Oh, dope.
You should get Bunny on here one time.
She'd love to tell her story.
She has a podcast.
We need to get you on her podcast, too.
It's called Dumb Blonde Podcast.
Lead us in here, Theo.
I need to plug my wife down.
Dumb Blonde Podcast.
We'll put a link to it in Theo.
Yeah, she's crushing, man.
And she's like on Apple.
She's always in like the top 10 on the comedy chart.
She really kills.
But Bunny just took me under, you know, kind of took me under her wing.
What was it about her?
I think she was just.
It was like a genuine thing the moment I met her.
Like, I just knew she was a, you could feel the genuineness from her.
And she was in a very ungenuine business, right?
Like, that business is slimy.
Oh, yeah.
It's a lot of shucking.
It's a lot of game being ran on both ends.
She's running game.
They're running game.
It's just a lot of game happening.
It's finesse.
It was just, I could just feel the authenticity in her, though.
I just like, I hate to be the cliche like I felt it.
It was soulmates at sign, but I felt that for real, Bubba.
Like, I felt that connection with her, and she did too.
And how'd you convince her to do it?
Because if she's living this lavish life, you know, she's living a more lavish life as a lot of those, you know, a lot of sex workers, if they get dialed in on their business and they're business women as well or businessmen, if they gay workers, then they get, you know, they do real well, you know?
So how do you get her, I mean, if she stops in that van, I think, damn, this bitch smells like repossession, dog.
I'd be out of there, bro.
Nah, dude.
She was.
Damn, bro.
She got ghosts of freaking people jerking off in this bitch.
Yeah, no.
If four people live in a van and I roll up and have any business sense, the last thing I'm doing in that van is falling in the middle.
I'm telling you, dude, she did.
The absolute last thing.
I'd freaking leave one of my legs in that bitch for a while.
She picked up a fucking straight pit bull.
She said her attraction was I was clearly the saddest human she'd ever met.
I swear to God.
That's what she said.
I'm letting others hope for us.
I'm the second one.
She was like, you had the saddest eyes in the room.
I don't know.
We just connected, man.
It was like, it felt like a love story that was supposed to work.
I mean, we're talking about a woman.
You know, we're talking about an ex-drug dealer and an ex-prostitute get together and build what we've built together.
You know, a woman who has a podcast that's crushing a big Patreon.
She still does the OnlyFans thing and absolutely just fucks that and crushes that to death.
And then, you know, I went on to fuck, dude.
I'm sitting here talking to fucking Theo Vaughn on a podcast that I spoke into existence two calendar years ago.
Yeah.
Right?
I didn't know you from the man on the moon.
just moved to Nashville, what, almost two years ago or whatever?
And I was like, I can't even believe it.
It's been at least a year and a half.
And I banged you immediately.
I didn't know you from the man on the moon.
I was like, yo, I'm from here.
Like, I need to get on the cast.
And here I sit.
It's like, and not just because you're hearing my story, because I consider us homies.
Yeah.
Like, you're my boy.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, we're just talking about some shit we talk about in the fucking green room of Zane's right now.
Yeah.
It was funny, too.
It's like, you can, sometimes people are always like, I want to be on this and that.
And sometimes it just works out how it works out.
It's like, sometimes you almost just have to have a time for me anyway, where you feel like, oh, this person's in my life.
I want to talk.
You know, I saw you the other night at Brennan's show, and I was like, man, I just seen you a few times where we'd seen each other in different places.
And I'm like, man, every time that guy is just, people want to be around that guy.
That guy just lights up the fucking room.
I just love people, dude, man.
And they love you.
Oh, dude, I love them and I love you.
They love you.
But it's like, who would have thought that me and Bunny's story would end up where it's at?
I think she did before I did.
And I think that's why she took the fucking, you know, the fucking pound puppy in.
She was like, I think she had even the vision I didn't at the time, you know?
Oh, yeah.
And I was like, you were drooling, dude.
Yeah, it was like homeo and drooliette, baby.
You know what I'm saying?
I'll tell people, I didn't pick Bunny.
Bunny picked me.
She's the man in this situation.
I was just like, yes, I'll go out with you.
And that's just kind of how it worked.
That's awesome.
Yeah, we've been together, you know, I think six years, going on seven years now.
And do you think y'all will have a child or not?
I don't think so.
I don't think that's something that's in our, you know, Bunny didn't have a desire to birth a child, but she always had a desire to be around children.
So I think that we kind of fed each other's needs.
I got custody of my daughter right when I met Bunny.
Dude, you know when somebody's poor, when they grew up poor and white, when somebody says, I have custody.
The word custody hits the hair, bro.
That's the most word.
That was the word that I always heard growing up.
No, it was like I had custody.
You know, I don't like telling this part.
Well, I want to tell it.
I think she appreciates it now.
Her mother had a battle with a heroin addiction, Bailey's mother, my daughter.
And she's sober now and back in Bailey's life, which is awesome.
Oh, that's amazing.
But at the time, it was bad.
I mean, like, you know, really, really, really true addict stuff bad.
So I was getting custody of Bailey at simultaneously courting Bunny, all while some other girls, like, in week three of being pregnant.
Wow.
So it was like a really weird moment where Bunny had every reason to run.
And instead, she just fucking, that bitch dug her heels in and was like, let's fucking go.
Throw me the fastest pitch you can, big boy.
I'm going to catch it.
And we immediately, you know, took custody of Bailey.
She started raising Bailey as her own.
To this day, Bailey calls Bunny mama and calls her mother mom.
So, you know, and her mother was in a same-sex relationship.
She's gay.
So the other girl that raised Bailey from birth is a part of it, too.
So Bailey's got three moms.
Damn.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, dude.
Just fucking.
That's a limit.
Yeah, it's a thing, dude.
I mean, it's a business.
It's a legal limit, I think, in a lot of times.
I'm the only testosterone in the room besides Bunny because she's a little aggressive sometimes.
But it's all fucking bitches and me.
But it works out great.
Do you have, were there, tell me about one of the toughest times you guys had on the road.
You guys partied pretty hard, I'm sure.
Was there a night where you didn't think you was going to make it?
Any nights you ended up at the hospital?
Yeah, I had a.
Because I had a night, man.
This is a few years back.
This is more than a few years back now, but I was like sitting there and I was so close to going to the freaking emergency room.
My heart just rattling, baby.
Just, you know, like a cheerleader was shaking that bitch.
Mine was codeine, so it was the opposite.
Damn.
It was going so slow that between breaths, I would hold my breath for a second and put my thumb up to my throat or behind my ear to see if I could just catch a light.
And I was like, I thought I just drank too much cough syrup, and I thought it was over.
And how much did you drink it?
What was it, dime tap?
Yeah, no, no, no, dude.
We were doing, you know, we were getting real activists and, you know, we were going for the, we were mixing the potions.
Oh, wow.
Sometimes we just get the straight pink, the codeine, or, you know, just the straight, you know, what sometimes we get to purple, but we, you know, we, dude, we were doing, you know, 8, 10, 12 ounces, just filling up, put, dropping fours and sprites every day and just getting them gone before noon.
And then I'd be so low from that fucking four ounces or six ounces or eight ounces of codeine, I would fucking do some blow to pick myself up.
And then I'd take a Xanax to try to go back to sleep, you know?
And that's what I tell people, too, when they're like, you need to worry about your health.
I'm like, trust me, man, I'm going to live a long, longer life than y'all think.
I have changed my ways dramatically.
When people see me out drinking a lot, they're like, you're fat and drink a lot.
I was like, I used to do eight balls of cocaine after eating codeine for breakfast and I would balance it out with Xanax.
Fuck you.
I was a Molotov cocktail of death.
If that didn't kill me, I think a little obesity would be okay while I'm currently working to lose the weight, Karen.
I'll be fucking all right, okay?
I don't need you worried about my heart.
I have a cardiologist, bitch.
I'm fine.
I'm losing weight.
You should have seen me when I was just running around like my drug of choice used to be more.
You know what I'm saying?
That was my drug of choice.
Like, what's your drug of choice?
What do you got?
You know what I'm saying?
Fucking.
Oh, yeah, baby.
What do you have the most of?
Dude, my favorite weed was cocaine.
That was it, dude.
Yeah, for sure.
They were like, damn, baby.
Only person that could smell that is you.
Yeah.
Guess what my dad would start doing?
What's that?
God rest his soul.
He would get a couple drinks, and then he would walk to the back of this bar, and he would just be like, hey, can I just, I just need a cup.
And they'd give him a cup, and they had an ice machine in the back, and he'd go fill up his own cup, and then get in the car and pull out his bottle from under the seat.
He'd mix his own drink right there in the console, put his seatbelt on, drop the top on his little Seabring convertible, put his sunglasses on.
He'd have one for the road, man.
He has a damn C-bring?
Yeah, dude.
He had a Seabring, man.
When he passed away, there wasn't a lot to divvy up around the family because his wife's a cunt.
But what we did end up getting...
Yeah, right.
But what we did get was his Seabring, and I gave that.
I was in charge of giving shit away.
But as a family, we decided to give that to Scott so his son could have it who's in college or you know what I mean or whatever.
And the Sebring's still around, dude.
Scott's one of my responsible.
My two brothers are super responsible.
I'm not.
Scott and Roger.
Roger's the oldest.
Scott's the next one.
So Scott has the Sebring.
And Roger just wanted the Kentucky Derby stuff because him and dad used to go bet on horses together, you know, and all the stuff related to the meat business.
And I took the pictures of the clowns.
But yeah, dude, the Sebring is still in the fucking family.
Scott tended that bitch.
Scott tuned that motherfucker up.
It's nice, man.
It's running.
That thing's pimping.
Every time I go see him down in Georgia, we'll take the Sebring out to go get a drink.
Hey, come in it, bro.
Make it mean something.
That's it, dude.
I did lose Bertha.
I'm sad about that.
I missed my van.
Everything needed to go, dude.
That thing.
I put four transmissions in it.
I put 400,000 miles on it.
We beat that thing to death.
Yeah.
Wow.
On the fifth transmission, I just never went back and picked it up.
Damn, yeah.
Yeah, dude.
I remember my friend Billy Conforto, dude, who was probably the greatest gay prize fighter that never was in any sanction fights.
He was homosexual, but he beat people up and nobody'd ever seen it.
Right.
It was an obscure thing.
Oh, nobody ever seen it.
Still, I mean, still, you see some of it, but you never saw it like this, dude, bro.
And he hired some dude in the neighborhood.
He gave him like $1,100 to fix his transmission.
That dude fucking never fixed it.
We went over there to pick it up.
Finally, we opened up the hood and everything inside of it was gone.
He beat his ass, didn't he?
Yeah, he did.
He did, dude.
And the guy thought he could punk him because he was a gay dude, you know?
And Billy fucking lit him up, bro.
I know some gay people that are.
He shifted every gear inside of that dude, bro.
I know that, dude.
I know Bailey's other mother, Cheyenne, her baby.
Gays can fight.
Listen, Cheyenne fights like a dude.
Bailey's other mom fights like a fucking dude.
Gay women and gay men should fight each, meet in the middle and fight.
Oh, yeah.
Dude, listen, I got my money on Cheyenne nine out of ten times.
They used to have Foxy boxing at a strip club in Nashville, and Cheyenne would show up like a ringer and just beat the brakes off people, dude.
We'd show up like a chicken fight, taking bets on the side, and Cheyenne would just be in there fanning fucking people out.
It wouldn't be fair because these little girls would be in there bouncing with their titties today looking all cute.
And Cheyenne would just come in there just fucking thunder.
Bow, bow, get out of the town.
Just swinging from the goddamn shoulders.
All hip action, dude.
Looking like fucking a karate.
Oh, yeah, putting a lady in.
Dude, we had, I remember they used to have a group called Fag Fist Fights, right?
Yeah.
And it was gay.
It was a gay men group.
And they came to different college towns and they'd put boxing ring at a bar and gay men would fight, you know, and they would, you'd buy, you'd pay $5, whatever you get in, and these dudes would fight, bro.
I'd pay $1,000 for a ringside table, one of those right now.
It was crazy, man.
I can't believe they used to come in Hammond, Louisiana.
They'd roll through probably twice a year, and we'd go over there.
Did the midget wrestlers come through, too?
I always heard about that, but I never saw that kind of shit.
We all do.
We got it here at the fairgrounds every other month.
Yeah.
It was the best.
I'm sure.
There was no fair even.
It's just a couple of midget wrestlers.
No, so they have this thing at the fairground where you rent out this place.
Dude, these fucking midgets, dude, would fuck.
We're going to be politically correct now.
Fuck that.
They're fucking midgets, dude.
And they call themselves midgets called midget wrestling.
Different ones do.
The old school ones, I think, Will say it, but then a lot of new, you know, if they're fancier, they won't say it.
Yeah, yeah, the fancy midgets, that makes sense.
The real trashy poor midgets are like midgets, right?
Yeah, these were poor midgets then, dude.
But they would do like double gainer backflips off the top rope.
Yeah.
It was some shit that, like, they should.
A couple of them guys should have went to the WWE.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah, well, I don't think, well, WWE missed that whole thing.
They never got into smaller folks being in there.
Yeah.
Rey Mysterio was like the closest thing, right?
Yeah.
Because he was like, you know, acrobatical.
I think they left the acrobatical shit to Lucha Libre wrestling.
Oh, you go down in Mexico, you see whatever, dude.
Is that what they call it?
Is it Lucha Libre?
I believe it called it.
Is that the movie?
I think that's what it's called.
It's called Lucha Libre, yeah.
That wrestling was fucking, people were doing backflips and shit, and I think that's what the midget wrestling was.
They couldn't break a table.
I mean, they were so small, man, you'd have to cut the table down the middle before they even got on it.
They would cheat it off the bottom.
They would kind of bring it, you know, cut solving three-four inches.
Do you know, was there any time y'all got hijacked or anything on the road or robbed?
No, we never had to deal with nothing like that.
We had a lot of fights.
We got not paid a few times.
We stole some TVs out of venues and stuff.
We've took pictures and art and all kinds of stuff.
Art.
It's just that thing above the urinal that says when there's a car auction.
Man, it's Thursday.
I stole neon signs.
You know what I mean?
I've done all that stuff.
I broke a window at a bar before, just like, then they were like, we got insurance.
I was like, but you won't be open tomorrow, bitch.
I was like, fucking.
Did one of my friends, can you, the YouTube comedian touches neon sign?
I think it's our friend Jamie Lisso did this.
Oh, shit.
Why do they have all this stuff now?
Remember when you could find, there was a nine videos and you could find it every time?
Yeah, now it's Jamie.
Jamie Lisso, L-I-S-S-O-W.
I think it's him.
Oh, there it is right there.
Comedian electrocuted on stage.
I just ate three sticks and I'm still hungry.
Just ate three sticks.
We got to play one more segment.
It looks like he's taking it out of touch.
No, he really burst into it if he didn't try it again.
That's kind of normal special kind of hard game.
I would have had it happen twice to me.
For sure.
I'd have been like, no, I'd have touched one more time.
For sure.
One more time.
Just like, let me just see.
I'd be like, that ain't real.
Yeah, no, I've stolen the onsign out of a bar, though.
Did they ever not pay y'all?
I'm trying to think.
Yeah, but it was more like shady stuff.
Usually you had to get, yeah, well, usually you get with the agent before you can go get into the clubs.
Before that, it's just weird rooms.
They had a guy who would, it used to just be bringer shows.
Like, you had to bring eight people.
Right.
You know, and so you get there and you're like, you don't have anybody.
How did you get it?
You can't perform.
How did you get picked up by an agent in your business?
I think you just start doing well.
You get about 10 minutes going and some manager sees you and then the manager connects you with an agent usually.
And they'll tell you, because you got to feel like that's got to be a hard business to break.
Like you just got to be crushing.
Where did you cut your teeth at?
I cut my teeth a little bit in New Orleans and I cut them mostly honestly in L.A. You know, I moved out there and I hadn't really performed much and I took a comedy class even.
I went to a class and people always make fun of the classes and shit.
I went there and the best thing about the class was I hated the class.
I was like, I'm better than everybody in here, even though I wasn't.
But in my head, you're just like, oh, I'm cool.
And they had, at the end of the class, you got to get on stage and perform.
That was the graduation.
So you were in front of a full room and you got a three-minute tape.
You got your tape.
And my tape was decent.
So then you'd go around to other places.
And then, you know, next thing you know, it's five years later.
And you're, you know, just starting to travel around and do it.
And then it's 10 years later.
And at that time, I think around 10 years, I thought about quitting.
I moved back home for about four or five months.
Really?
Yeah.
What encouraged you to get back?
I don't know, man.
I was with her.
I broke up.
My girlfriend and I broke up.
I don't know.
I was at home.
I was working at a Mexican restaurant, bartending in a Mexican restaurant.
I was not a good bartender.
And I broke some equipment.
And I fucking, I still might owe those people an amends, honestly, but I broke some damn equipment there.
One of them margarita makers, you know, that bitch.
I was trying to put it back together late at night and I couldn't figure it out.
And I broke that bitch.
And the guy, then, you know, they were upset.
And I don't know.
At that point, I felt like there was no reason for me really to stay.
I think I kind of hinged my bets on this girl, kind of.
So when that fell apart, I felt like I didn't know what to do.
And then I went back.
I guess that's what happened.
Yeah.
Who all did you feature for early?
Oh, that's a good question, man.
I featured for this one guy named Mark Lundholm.
And sober guy, super funny dude, but he smokes cigars, right?
And we got stuck up in Notre Dame of Mishawaka, Indiana.
Oh, yeah, right outside of South Bend.
Right outside of South Bend, man.
We even went over and saw the bar where like Rudy would sit at and sit in his seat and stuff.
It's real cool.
But we were stuck indoors.
It was 30 degrees.
We were stuck indoors and we're sharing a little condo or house.
And he smoked cigars.
And I was like, hey, do you mind not smoking indoors?
And he's like, I'm going to be smoking.
And that bitch would smoke two cigars before he'd go to sleep, I think.
Yeah, he was lighting them off each other.
Yeah, yeah.
And if I'm wrong, Mark, I'm sorry, but that's just how I remembered.
And, you know, they had a guy, Tom Rhodes, too, who I love, who I got to have on here sometime.
And he used to smoke Marlborough Reds.
And he and I had a share place in Shreport one time.
And I remember asking him, I said, hey, man, we mind not smoking indoors.
He goes, I'm going to smoke in.
I think he lit one right up there.
He might have lit two up.
He lit two up.
I think it made me hold one.
One more question because I got to ask while I got you.
Yeah.
You probably told it a thousand times, but what was your worst or most memorable bomb?
I mean, I've had one that I've told where I just kept, I bombed and they didn't know That I had to come back out between each act.
It was like a battle of the bands.
So they booed me off in the beginning.
I burned my material so fast because they hated me.
But I had to keep come back out.
And it was horrible.
Dude, at one point, I came out with an American flag.
Like, I didn't know what this has to bring unity.
This land is yours.
I didn't know what.
I didn't have any material left.
And I had to do like another probably 20 minutes, man.
And the best part was towards the end, I would kind of sneak like I was going to come back out.
And I'm like, there's no way he's coming back out, you know?
And I would just come back.
And they would just die laughing because they couldn't believe, bro.
One time I went out and telling smooth criminal.
I didn't even fucking know the words.
Half of it was man in the mirror.
I didn't even know the fucking words, dude.
And that shit, man.
Oh, but at the time, bro, and her, I felt bad even asking them to pay me.
I just wanted to leave.
And it's such a dichotomy of leaving a place when you've crushed it and that feeling of bravado and I did good.
Then that other feeling of leaving when you did not and still having to get to your vehicle or get to leave and you know you're going to run into people.
Oh man.
And you just feel that energy.
People just turning out.
Jellyroll, man.
I appreciate the time, man.
I feel like we covered a lot of stuff.
Do you?
You feel like we covered a lot of stuff?
I love it, Dave.
Fuck.
When you Frankenstein, I think it'll be the funniest show ever.
What is it?
I don't even know.
Oh, I don't know either, man.
I'm just trying to stay alive.
Jamie got a damn electrocuted, bro.
That sucks.
That S-U-C-K-S, baby.
That sucks.
Dude, thank you so much.
So now you're on tour.
So just tell us where you're at now, you know?
Yeah, man.
Here goes my shameless plug.
Because you've had this song.
You've had a lot of the songs that hit.
What really started to catapult you then?
Let's get to that one.
Save me.
Yeah.
Yeah, there was a lot of, like, this is what I tell people.
Everything I did was a step on the ladder.
Save me was like skipping 10 steps on the ladder.
You know, I know.
I'm going to store you here in Save Me Now.
It even, it's more.
It matters.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, it's like I could bore you with like every little step that helped, and there was so many.
Everything mattered is what I tell people.
Everything you're going through right now in your career, if you're a young, up and inspiring artist, comedian, or whatever, every one of those little things matter.
And then there's like a small tipping point that happens, like the Malcolm Gladwell book, where shit just kind of the save me for me will always be that moment of like, you know, and it's fun.
I don't know how it is in your business, but it's always the shit you don't think is going to be it.
Yeah.
Dude, we fucking wrote Save Me on a Sunday.
We recorded Save Me on a Monday.
We shot a video to some, no, we wrote it Saturday, recorded it Sunday, shot the video Monday, put it out Tuesday.
Wow.
That's how that worked.
Didn't think twice about it.
And did you know that it would be that?
Did you know?
Did you have an inkling?
Honestly, did you have any idea?
I just knew that I couldn't quit fucking with it.
I just knew that it was something about it that just stirred my spirit.
And I was like, I just, man, we got to go for it.
And I just, I was proud of it.
I was like, to me, it was like a therapy session publicly.
You know, and that was like the biggest thing for me was like just letting those emotions out in a public way was like, I don't know, some songs, I have songs, Theo, that I wrote that mean a lot to me that I'll never play anybody ever because they mean that much to me.
And Save Me was one of those songs that could have been that song, but it meant even more to me.
So it was like, nah, this one needs to go out.
Like, I just, I don't know, man.
I was just prepared for it to, I loved it so much, I didn't care what it did.
If it popped or flopped, I just felt like fucking, you know, this is the last thing I'll tell you this story.
People, I was talking to Travis O'Guin from Strange Music once.
We were talking about how I get thousands of emails a year of people who say, or messages a year that say, your music helped me.
I overcame drug addiction.
I was going to kill myself.
And I found your music.
I was literally, I've had messages that were like, I was sitting there gunloaded listening to a playlist that was going to be the last listening of my life.
Damn.
And found a song of yours that made me feel like, man, this is, it touched me in such a way that it changed my decision.
And this is my thing.
If I get 5,000 of those a year and 4,999 of them are lies, holy fuck, can you believe we saved one fucking human?
You know what I mean?
Let's just assume everybody's full of shit, but one fucking guy.
Holy shit, man.
You know what I mean?
And to me, at the end of the day, that's what Save Me was about.
It was like, man, what means the most to me, and that's why I write the music I write, is people come up to me and, oh, dude, such and such was fun.
I love that song.
I danced to it.
But when people come up to you and say, dude, we played Save Me at my cousin's funeral that overdosed.
And it's now his mother's favorite song and the way she copes with it.
Or we played Smoking Section at this funeral.
Or we played Smoking Section to commemorate this.
Or, hey, man, this song helped me when I got out of rehab.
Yeah.
That shit is like fucking what this shit's about, dude.
You know what I mean?
Like, when a motherfucker's like, dude, I don't just watch your podcast for humor.
It was the fucking first thing I laughed at after I got out of fucking sobriety.
Like, that's the shit that touches the soul.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, a friend of mine recently told me, he said, yeah, man, if you have a story and you don't share it, it's that thing that you're afraid to share, you know, it's that scary thing, you know?
That's the connection.
That's the thing that, you know, that somebody else could really be waiting to hear.
You know, there's a reason why there's that magnetism of uncertainty with you, with sharing stuff sometimes, you know?
And yeah, man, it's wild how certain things can have an effect on people.
I mean, there are songs I go listen to that of certain friends that passed away, and I'll go listen to a certain song, and it reminds me of them.
It reminds me of him.
It reminds me of certain times in my life when I cared about certain things.
it is.
The power of a song is really powerful.
Yeah, it'll take you back to a place in time, man.
Yeah, dude.
It'll take me back to that freaking Bon Jovi song, baby.
Yes, baby.
Yes, baby.
It'll take you right back to being in the front seat of that fucking car for however you felt the first time you heard it.
Oh, hell yeah.
It's also the greatest feeling on earth is when you hear a song for the first time and the feeling you get.
Yeah.
I remember certain songs in my life that I heard for the first time and like it just changed everything about how I thought about things.
Just one song.
Yeah, Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls by TLC.
I remember.
We were driving to the mall one time and that bitch came on, dude.
And we fucking, we were never the same again.
Yeah, for sure.
I said Tim and Joey.
We were never the same.
We sang that thing.
Do you have a favorite song?
I got some stuff that we play on the pod sometimes by Evan Bartels.
I love.
He's a local singer-songwriter.
I love listening to some of his stuff.
Do I have a favorite song?
You know what I like right now?
I listen to Dirt by Florida, Georgia Line.
I just really like that song.
I get stuck on a song for a little while.
No, I don't like that.
I've been into country music more since I've been here, but I've been listening to Juice World recently that I really like.
I don't know if I have a favorite song.
Do you?
Yeah, I'm one of them weird dudes that has a top five in every category of everything.
I've got a top five comedy bit list of what I think was the best top five comedy bits to me personally.
But song-wise, number one, as of now, they're subject to change every now and then, is Against the Wind by Bob Seeger.
That song just has told my story, and I feel like it's the story of who I am as a human, what I've been through as an artist, and where I'm at as an artist now.
And I just remember the first time I heard that song and just thinking, man, this is my life.
And I still feel it every time I listen to it.
So you got things onto YouTube, and then things started to really pop from there then, when Save Me came out.
Yeah, man.
It was just building the YouTube and, you know, just building the, just putting out music.
Oh, yeah, with us 30-something million.
I mean, your spends are crazy, man.
Yeah, yeah.
Save me's at almost 100 million now.
That's insane.
97 million almost.
Some of y'all want to go check it out, gang.
Fuck with me and get me over the line here.
Look up populations of countries right now.
I want to see what country is listening.
What country could have entirely listened to it?
Yeah, what country could have everybody wanted to know?
I think when I looked at it recently, it's like one-third of the American population.
Yeah, that's probably about right.
Let's go to, just can you go down?
Is there a list?
Is there a chart?
There we go.
Get that chart.
Let me zoom in a little bit, Daddy.
Let's look at 100 million right there, 98. There we go.
Vietnam.
Holy shit.
Vietnam, baby.
We're close to touching Egypt, dude.
I need to get to the Egypt mark.
You close, baby.
That would be fire, dude.
And they could have been over there fucking mummies and shit.
Bang and save me.
The Philippines.
Once you hit Philippines, baby, that is mad.
It's crazy that it's more than the United Kingdom.
That's nuts.
That's amazing.
I never thought about it like that.
I think about it from like football fields.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's how I just like categorize things to me as, you know, how many people, how many nights could I sell out of football fields at that rate?
You know what I'm saying?
It was like 30 nights or something.
And now y'all are playing bigger venues.
Now you're touring.
Yeah, I'm touring with Shine Down later this year.
Tickets actually go on sale.
They should be on sale by the time y'all see this.
Tickets are on sale.
Jelly Roll Shine Down, they've had more number ones than any rock band in history.
Wow.
I can't believe I'm going out with them.
It's surreal.
That's amazing.
It's just fucking awesome.
So I'm going out with Shine Down later this year.
I got a bunch of headline dates.
Jellyroll615.com.
You want to come see me?
Sure, use the support.
And we're playing a lot of festivals, dude.
Amazing.
That's going to be a blast, bro.
People are going to love it.
I got a big announcement coming for Nashville in a few weeks.
I got to figure out, but you know it.
But I got to.
For a mayor, for everywhere.
Yeah, for sure.
Not just for Nashville.
No, no, no.
I'm saying, you know, they're out now, but I'm saying we're going to announce our Nashville show.
Oh, there's a big announcement about the Nashville show coming up.
It'll be, it's going to be insane.
It's never thought.
This ain't even something I want to say.
I dreamed about this.
Nah, didn't think it ever happened.
I'm just saying, fucking.
Didn't even dream about it, baby.
I'll tell you what I dreamed.
What was that song of Bon Jovi saying one of their hits, Tim?
Who's in here?
We've been fighting this all day, Bizzle.
We can't remember the Bon Jovi.
I had hours to think about it even after.
And fucking.
We both lie silently still.
Is that Bon Jovi?
In the ditto.
Okay, not them.
Who was it?
Damn.
No.
Look, you look at Bonnie.
No, it was before that.
You give love a bad name?
Is that a bad message?
Let's sing a song for the...
Johnny working down in the dark.
Working for a man.
He keeps your love.
Yes.
Living on prayer?
Yeah.
No, that's Aerosmith redid.
No, that's living on the edge, baby.
Oh, yeah.
Fuck we.
No, now I'm saying living on a prayer like living on the edge.
Living on.
No, that's living on the edge again.
Living on a prayer.
Shoot me.
Your usual work on the die.
You gotta hold on to what we got.
It doesn't make a difference if you make it or not.
Yes, yes, yes.
And there were broke.
My babysitter.
We're halfway.
My babysitter played that.
It was the first song I ever remember hearing.
Yes.
Because I heard it with a woman.
I heard it with a chick, and I thought she was cute.
And so in my mind, that made enough glue.
And so, dude, I kept wearing her car.
Oh, you were living on a prayer belt.
I kept saying, hey, let me put your seatbelt on for you again.
We'd be driving.
I put her seatbelt on 30 times, just rubbing my hand across her chest, dude.
Then hopping behind my buddy's map in the back.
Y'all were sharing the maps together, dude.
Oh, man.
We're both headed the same direction, eh?
Jelly Roll, thank you so much.
We'll put the information where people can come check you out.
When does the tour start?
Do you know?
I head out at the end of this month to do the East Coast run.
I think those are all sold out.
But the Big Shinedown tour starts in the fall.
I got some dates getting announced with a couple other guys that are big friends of mine.
I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about it, but I will because I don't care.
I'm going out and do some shows with Ko Wetzel, our boy.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I'm doing some of the shows.
I got a Ko Wetzel show.
Me and Ko Wetzel got a song coming out later that's really dope called Role Model aka to cocaine song.
And yeah, I got some shit cooking, man.
It's going to be a big year for me, dude.
It's surreal.
We're like doing full amphitheaters all year.
It's crazy.
Dude, that's amazing, man.
Red Rocks is on sale right now.
There's only a couple thousand tickets left.
We went on sale a few days ago, and there's like 1,700 tickets left.
I would cry if I could hurry up and sell them just to have the piece to know I sold out the fucking top two most legendary venues in America.
That'd be fascinating, man.
Yeah, Ko is unbelievable.
Koe is just a, I mean, he's at, he's a.
He's at fuck you, Texas rock country, southern.
He's like me.
You can't really label what he does anything.
It's just different.
He is, what is the word I'm looking for?
He's a rebel.
Yeah, no, for sure, dude.
It's polarizing.
He's a rebel man.
Yeah, he's a rebel man, dude.
He's like me.
He does not give a fuck.
He's one of my favorite people in music.
Well, fuck him, and we'd be happy to have him in here sometime.
Fuck you, because we'll have to have him in here sometime.
Jellyroll, thank you so much, man.
And congratulations on all this success.
And just thanks for sharing your story, man.
I can relate to certain chapters of it.
And yeah, it just seems like what you're creating is just part of your life, man.
It's cool to see.
Thank you for watching, bro.
Thank you for having me.
I love you, man.
It means the world.
Yeah, love you too.
Bizzle Gibbons, tour manager, thanks for stopping in.
Riley Mao peeked in before we had to go to, I'm sure, some type of church meetup.
And Nilo sat in today to help produce.
So thank you guys so much.
Gang.
Gang.
Gang, gang.
Now I'm just floating on the breeze.
And I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
I must be cornerstone.
Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this piece of my life out.
I can feel it in my bones.
But it's gonna take a little time for me to set that parking break and let myself on my shine.
Find that light on me Sit and tell you the final stop.
I'll just be happy just now.
I've been moving way too fast on the runaway train with a heavy load of my past.
And these wheels that I've been riding on, they're once so thin that they're damn near gone.
I guess now they just weren't built a little bit.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jonathan Kite and welcome to Kite Club, a podcast where I'll be sharing thoughts on things like current events, stand-up stories, and seven ways to pleasure your partner.
The answer may shock you.
Sometimes I'll interview my friends.
Sometimes I won't.
And as always, I'll be joined by the voices in my head.
You have three new voice masters today.
A lot of people are talking about Kite Club.
I've been talking about Kite Club for so long, longer than anybody else.
So great.
Hi, Sweet.
Anyone who doesn't listen to Kite Club is a dodgy bloody wanker.
Do you know what I mean?
Oh, hi.
I'll take a quarter pounder with cheese and a McFlurry.
Sorry, sir, but our ice cream machine is broken.
Oh, no.
Oh!
I think Tom Hanks just bucked out me.
Anyway, first rule of Kai Club is tell everyone about Kai Club.
Second rule of the Kai Club is tell everyone about Kai Club.
Third rule.
Like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts or watch us on YouTube, yeah?
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