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May 7, 2024 - This Past Weekend - Theo Von
02:16:10
E500 Zac Brown

Zac Brown is a Grammy award-winning musician and songwriter known for fronting the Zac Brown Band. His summer tour kicks off this month with shows all across the U.S. He is originally from Atlanta, GA.  Zac Brown joins Theo for episode #500 of This Past Weekend, chatting about growing up in Georgia, the early ups and downs of getting his band together, the craziest bar fight he ever witnessed, memories of his friend Jimmy Buffett, wild experiences with plant medicine, why so many people take their shirts off at his shows, and much more.  Zac Brown: https://www.instagram.com/zacbrown/ ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit  https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ  DoorDash: Download the DoorDash app and use code THEO to get 50% off your next order, up to $15 when you spend $15+ on your next flower, convenience, grocery, or retail. BlueChew: Go to http://bluechew.com and use code THEO at checkout to try BlueChew for free - just pay $5 shipping! Füm: Go to https://www.tryfum.com/THEO to get a free gift with your Journey Pack.  Gametime: Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code WEEKEND for $20 off your first purchase. Aura Frames: Go to http://AuraFrames.com/THEO to get $30-off plus free shipping on their best-selling frame.  ------------------------------------------------- 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: https://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 Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Ben https://www.instagram.com/benbeckermusic/  Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Colin https://instagram.com/colin_reiner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
All right, I've got some new tour dates to tell you about.
We've added a second show in Belfast over in the United Kingdom on June 6th.
Tickets are available now for that show.
And we're going to do more shows in Europe or white Europe.
And we just haven't had the chance to get them on.
So it'll happen in the future.
This is just a brief time that we're visiting over there.
As well, we have shows in Boise, Idaho, Western Valley City, Utah, Dublin, Manchester, London, Las Vegas, Halifax, and Vancouver.
I think we're going to add a St. George as well, Utah.
All those are at theovon.com slash T-O-U-R.
And if tickets, if it's sold out and you're getting something on a secondary market, don't overpay for tickets.
We'll come back through another time.
And I appreciate the support.
Today's episode is our 500th episode, and that's unbelievable to me.
And I'm just so grateful that we have been able to keep doing this.
So thank you for showing up for us and checking out some of the podcast.
We'll talk about it more on a solo episode in the near future.
But thank you so much.
I love you guys.
And yeah, dang, bro.
That's wild.
Today's guest is a musician from Atlanta, Georgia.
He's a three-time Grammy winner, the writer of countless hits over the years, and I can say, first and foremost, honestly, one of the best live shows around.
He's about to kick off a big summer tour.
We just got to hang out recently, and I'm fortunate to get to spend time with him again.
Today's guest is Mr. Zach Brown.
Shine that light on me I'll sit and tell you my stories Shine on me And I will find a song I've been singing I'm going to stay I've been moving
I left my phone somewhere yesterday.
And I don't know if you've done that.
Use the Find My rig on it.
Oh, I didn't have any of that set up.
And yeah, for two hours, I didn't have my phone.
It's a scary thing.
It was scary.
And look, here's the crazy part.
I was okay.
Yeah.
That was the kind of thing.
You feel your pocket vibrate?
Oh, I felt in there.
Yeah, I kept, well, I kept feeling my pockets.
I was like, well, did I make sure I felt my pockets?
Which was kind of a crazy thing.
Oh, when I run out of Zen or if I don't have my can of Zen in my pocket, bro, I'll pat my pants like every 15 seconds.
I'm like, it's the worst feeling like a fucking crackhead chasing a pebble, dude.
I'm like digging in the carpet.
I'm like, oh, shit, I don't have any Zen.
Yeah, I was even feeling on different parts of my pants I'd never felt on before, too.
Like, could it be like, is it in my cup?
Yeah, yeah.
Like, where, where did I put?
And it is crazy.
Yeah.
I'd be like, oh, maybe I didn't feel my pockets well enough.
That would be the thought that would come to my head.
And I would go back and do it.
And those cicadas are coming.
Do you know about it?
No.
The cicadas, bro, are on the horizon.
They're coming.
So it's an insect.
Yeah, I know what cicadas are.
Okay.
Beautiful insect.
Really, the El Camino is an insect kind of, if you look at them, very unique, appreciated, and do their own thing.
But they have, this year is a special year where this year they have two broods and they usually don't happen at the same time.
Okay.
And this is the first time since the 1800, 1805 or something that they are both happening at the same time.
So there will be some parts of the country.
I think it's just like in Illinois, where that'll get both of them at the same time.
And it'll be so loud you won't even be able to hear.
The locusts are coming.
It's like Albert Hitchcock shit where people are like running around hiding in their bathrooms and shit.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Yeah.
So if your spouse goes missing during that time, then that's on Mother Nature, I think.
Yeah.
But yeah, that's coming up pretty soon.
I think it's in May and early June.
So Zach Brown, man, good to see you, dude.
Likewise.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks, bro.
I appreciate you coming in, man.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Yeah.
Doing awesome.
You got a new song really doing well.
Yeah, I got a new one out.
Summertime song.
So we did a summer EP.
You never really put together like just a bunch of like this kind of songs before.
So we had the one we did for Jimmy Buffett too, the Pirates and Parrots, which just came out.
So that was part of it.
That was kind of the slower one.
But the other ones are all just kind of upbeat, just like lake or beach music stuff.
So yeah, Tyop's the one that's out right now.
And it's good shit, man.
It's always fun.
It's like when you write a new song, it's like having a new baby, you know, it's like just excited to get it out and play it live and hear people sing it back to you.
So it's a good time, fun time for that.
Yeah, well, I guess what's that?
Like it's like you get that song out there and then the first time you get it out there, you start to see that people know it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And usually if you see people like taking their shirts off while you're playing it, you know it's going to be a good one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Out in the crowd.
So.
Especially if those people are women, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
But normally the ones that want to, the women that want to do that are not the ones that you want to see do that, but it's still out there.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
You get to see what their R ⁇ D is like, the relative nipple diameter.
Oh, is that?
Relative to the size of the person breast itself.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So is it like a mortadella, like a big salami slice, or is it just like a little tiny olive or something?
I don't know what it is.
Like a little pimeno or whatever.
Yeah, exactly.
Oh, dang.
I didn't think about that.
I wonder who has the largest breast and the smallest nipple, you know?
That's got to be a Guinness thing, man.
Somebody's had to be recorded on that.
You would think it would probably be somebody that maybe be like kind of Swedish Vietnamese, maybe, I feel like.
Yeah, that's a good cross.
That'd leave, like, where there's no areola, it's just the tipple.
Yeah, that's it, brother.
Yeah, Annie Hawkins Turner, actually, better known by the stage name Norma Stitz, is a website entrepreneur and fetish model.
Her pseudonym is a wordplay on enormous tits as a uh giganto mastia is the proper word for giant yeah for having big breasts is actually called gigantomastia and she holds the guinness world record for the largest natural breast wow but no talk of the r d yeah yeah we're not getting really stats on her i want to get yeah i want to get some bts stats on that lady um yeah you've had success man when did you start to like you've had a lot of success right you've had
a long time of success i've been blessed man been blessed but worked hard yeah to get there you know just grinding man grinding for years and years to get to the beginning of the success oh that's interesting yeah do you remember like your first definition kind of of success and then do you feel like it's kind of changed over time some it does man i think you know you constantly every few years have to redefine what success means to you but you know back in back in the early days it was like i want to get a gig
or play some music in a bar you know and have them pay me and want me to come back you know that's kind of the first step and and i was playing backup for this guy just playing guitar for him and like singing backup for a dude and i was making a hundred bucks a night doing that and missing my early classes in college because of it but that was the first um time but even back man when i was a kid like i was in choir like first grade through you know all the way through college and songbird huh yeah i just music was my first love man and
it's still like one of my biggest loves that i have you know um it just moved me man and it's it's always been like my safety blanket as well like when i had my guitar with me as a kid like i carried it to school every day i was that kid like had a guitar with me like football practice after football practice it actually kept me getting hazed and playing football it's like when i went to high school and was playing high school ball um if i could play some pink floyd if i could play some wish you were here or
something the guys would want to do then they wouldn't rub ben gay on my nuts like they would all the other freshmen you know what i mean so yeah you can't beat up the guy if you need him to do something for you later exactly exactly that worked out good that's a great thing it's like that is such a great survival skill you're like i have to be of value to these people in some way shape or form and uh where was that in georgia where you're at yeah in uh for scythe county georgia which was pretty wild growing up was it there because when i was probably eight or
nine um you go to walmart and there'd be a full like kkk rally happening in the parking lot like no way hoods and robes and beating on windows and handing out flyers and you know i mean that was like it was not that long ago but for size county was pretty you know well known for that you know what i mean and yeah um figuring out what to do with that and then i remember later you know when i was yeah when i was a freshman we had the first ever like african-american
kid in the schools there that came there no way yeah and he was fast too he's he was fast well he had played football with us and um but yeah it's wild just thinking man it wasn't that long ago that it's it was like back back then you know it wasn't that far back yeah it is kind of crazy well i remember growing when i was growing up in our town like a lot of black folks didn't have you couldn't even have like like the one of the kind of top jobs you would have would maybe be like a teacher like you they didn't have like black doctors and stuff in our town you know when i was a
kid i've talked about that on here a lot but you know it's crazy to think that that you that that a part of that was alive in your life you know exactly that it was that you know the in straight up hoods you know what i mean that's crazy where would they meet at like a dollar general or whatever dude i don't know i don't know but uh but up in delanaga where i ended up moving for and graduating from high school up in north georgia where i'm from there like the dude we knew like the grand wizard lived in that house i was like his house and it was um did y'all go trick-or-treat there
no they'd give out like razor blades and m80s or something you know yeah i would think he would definitely yeah um i don't know what yeah because i actually shared events with uh david duke actually who was a part of the i think he was like one of the assistant chiefs or something of like the um of the ku klux klan at one point dude they had a restaurant i remember called ku klux clams dude in uh homa louisiana for
a while it was kind of like a little bit of like kind of a racial seafood kind of spot or whatever but um yeah i mean it's definitely crazy to think you know i never saw david duke do do anything racist but you know obviously he had that in him in his past you know yeah i think a lot of it too is you know it it's kind of based on just not being exposed to good people of all different kinds you know and that's like you know and i'm sure you feel the same way like getting to travel with what we do like i've
been on the road since i was you know 17 like just all over everywhere and so if you have if all you know if your granddad told you stories about these things you're just like the boogeyman right like you should be afraid of these things or you shouldn't do this or whatever you're like yeah you know screw those guys or whatever but you know when you travel man it just like that ignorance gets gone and then it's kind of like you still see people hung in it because i go back like i went back to my i think my 10 year high school reunion and the people had been doing the same thing every day since
i left and they might go to panama city beach to for like vacation once a year like we used to do on spring break but they're still kind of in that capsule you know what i mean so that's one thing and that's another thing too i'm sure we'll talk about later but you know being a being a camp kid like going to summer camp and being around kids of all different backgrounds and ethnicities and abilities and like that just opens you up for living with people for a week that you might not normally get to do in your own circles you know like we're kind
of limited to what our experience is to what our environment provides and then if you don't make an effort to go get out and see the world then you're kind of stuck in that thing you know yeah and it's and it's it's kind of easy for it to happen for a lot of people i think when you come out of high school because a lot of in a lot of places there's a lot of tradition right it's like, okay, well, you kind of go to the same place, maybe your family went or something like that.
And it's great, you know.
I think tradition is super important.
But then sometimes you don't realize you can be stuck in some of the same, like, your area can get stuck in a lot of same traditional patterns, you know, of like, of just thought, you know, for sure.
But, yeah, I'm trying to think of like my first time when I would go to camp.
I think one thing that was good about camp was you would, people came from other schools.
So it was like, suddenly your world was a little bit bigger, right?
Even if they came from a different town.
Like, I remember one time I met somebody and they told me they were from like a different, the place had a different name than the town I was from.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
Yeah.
I didn't know that like if you kept driving, you got to other places, you know, I just thought you would just, you know, you just got to the end of the street and there was just like this unwell kid out there yelling about deaf leopard all day, you know?
I didn't know you could really just go out into the world.
And you went to camp, you said?
Yeah, I went to camp and the camp that I went to and worked at as well was like an inclusion camp.
So you'd have kids in your group that might be on the spectrum and you'd have kids that come from like inner cities, like, you know, kind of impoverished areas.
And then you'd have like rich kids that just sit around and play Nintendo all day.
And then you'd have, you know, all, so you put everybody together.
And I remember like the Transformer thing for me, there's just like a rope spider web, right?
And you get there the first day and you're kind of in a group of these kids and you're like, you're kind of talking to them or kind of not really.
You're like, you're not really down with them.
But the first activity you got to do is every single person has to be passed through this spider web without touching it and get to the other side.
So when you got to grab a kid, you know, by his cankles and pick him up and pass him through the thing, after you do that, you know, it's like a low ropes course kind of activity.
But after you do that, then that's kind of the best icebreaker because it's like nobody's ever like everybody puts two fingers underneath and lifts you up off the ground.
You're like, you had never been picked up by other kids necessarily unless you might have been, you know, bullied or thrown around by them.
But it's like you got to get everybody through the other side without touching the spider web and then you can move to the next thing.
I've never seen this game.
So this is a popular camp game?
Yeah, it's just like a camp activity, like an icebreaker.
But once you realize, yeah, see the picture right there of him holding them up over their heads?
Yeah.
You have to like pick kids up and pass them and hopefully don't drop them on their head.
But it's very Egyptian almost based on this photo.
Yeah, we would like, we went looking.
Some kid went missing, bust, and we looked for him for almost two months, I remember.
And they're like, well, that's camp.
And we're like, find Jeremy, dude.
And they're like, whatever.
When I was a counselor, we had a girl.
Oh, but you ended up being a counselor at that camp.
At that camp.
Okay, so that camp had a male sector.
But I realized as a kid, like anybody that's really different than you from that point on, after you live with them for a week and you pick them up off the ground and you got to figure out.
And you have to, you realize like you're not that different.
It's just like people have different things.
Like, you know, some of the kids that I worked with, I worked with Special Olympics in high school too.
And like, you know, some of the, some of the, the, the kids that I worked with that had Down syndrome, they were like the sweetest, most optimistic.
Like they just had a lot of parts of life figured out that mainstream kids maybe wouldn't.
So it's like, once you're around that, and you become a champion for those kids.
And so if somebody else is picking on somebody that's different, you want to like stand up because that's like your boy that you were in camp with.
You realize in one week by dropping somebody into this situation, now they've been around all these different things and now they're going to Everybody has to do a skit, right?
You had to get up on a stage and you have to like do a stupid dance or whatever, like whatever to make people laugh.
Oh, dude, I remember we had to do Michael Jackson.
Sorry to cut you off, but I'm not.
Did I interrupt you really bad?
No, you're good.
Okay.
Sorry, man.
But I never, I never, I forgot about this.
We had to do, oh, another one bites the dust.
Who is that?
Michael Jackson?
Queen, bro.
Almost Michael Jackson.
And yeah, we had to, and I had never heard the song.
I didn't know what it meant or anything.
You know, I thought it was about drug use or whatever.
And, but yeah, we had to get out there and dance in front of the other camp.
I forgot about that.
Yeah.
And so, and so if you just go get up in your class at school and do that, dude, you're going to get picked on forever.
But being in that environment where you can be kind of brave for the first time and other people are like celebrating it and you, you kind of learn to be a little bit more confident.
You learn about other people and different kinds of people and you learn.
So I realized like in one week of taking a kid and putting them in this, and some kids like have a raw deal.
If they don't have any mentorship at home, if they don't have anybody that shows them how to be or how to treat people or why or whatever it is, then they leave camp with this new, like, there's like you were talking about, like, you just keep driving out of the town past the kid screaming about Def Leppard.
Like until you get out of that and you realize there's another world, then they look forward to coming back there the next year.
And that changes their mental capacity where they're like, hey, if I make the right decisions, then I can get to a better place than where I'm at rather than just being stuck there and, you know, watching people drink 40s and, you know, impregnate everybody in the neighborhood.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
People should not be allowed in some areas, and I'm going to say it, they shouldn't be allowed to have sex within probably 90 feet of themselves.
That's a safe border, bro, because you'd have to land it perfect.
Well, yeah, all of a sudden, you'd have to be up on a building to get it 90 feet to landing at the right spot.
Yeah, I think I'm not saying this.
Well, I think they shouldn't be allowed to have sex.
I don't know how you would phrase it.
We obviously need a legislator to help with this, but yeah, I think, yeah, there should be like a left the other.
We need some better zoning in some genetic way.
You're talking about not breeding within 90 feet of where they're at?
Are you talking about actual physical touch of it?
Because that presented a whole nother problem to me.
It's like, I got to figure out how to get with this girl that's like 30 yards away and succeed.
You know what I mean?
There would definitely be a great form of birth control because The people that would actually hit the bullseye is going to be like super small.
Yeah, I mean, maybe an archer, I guess.
I don't know who would have, yeah, some other me, the lacrosse.
Yeah, that guy.
Yeah.
Oh, that guy would be messy, but he would get the guy.
Um, no, dude, you were just talking about something.
Oh, well, you were talking about like kids with Down syndrome and stuff, right?
So I was like really humbled.
Recently, I went on this show.
It's called Beautiful, Tasty, Beautiful, right?
And the guys, it's these fellas, Sean and Marley.
They're Australian, right?
One of them has Down syndrome.
One of them, I think, is just like a cap of sig or something.
So here we are right here, right?
Go to that beer chicken right here.
I'm a huge fan of these guys, right?
Been a fan for years.
And so when I was in Australia, I got to go do their show.
I've watched some of them cooking.
Oh, yeah, you have?
Yeah.
Oh, I got to go do their show.
So, dude, here's the craziest part.
At the end, they're having a beer.
I can't drink, right?
That's because in my life, right?
Where I'm at in my life.
And I'm thinking to myself, and the guys, Marley's like, you know, have a beer.
And I'm like, I'm trying to explain to him.
I was like, I can't.
He's like, have a beer.
And I'm like, these, I'm like, I can't, if I ever thought someone was like negative about these guys, they can drink.
I can't even, they have Down syndrome.
I can't, and they can have beer.
Yeah.
Like they're more reliable person.
Yeah, they can beer.
They have crazy gifts, man.
Right.
But it's like, I can't even have a, like, that's the strata I'm on now.
Right.
It's like when you are an alcoholic, you are outside of, considered by society, outside of the web of people that even have down center.
It's like, God, I was like, oh, it just felt like such a lame-o, man.
But yeah, these guys are, bro, unbelievable.
Like, I didn't even know.
I don't even know if they have down.
They were so, I was like, these guys are way cooler than most people I've ever spoken to.
You know, it's like there's a, there's a, you find this with kids too, that have been given everything and like maybe their parents don't pay attention to them or maybe they don't really whatever, but there's like a poverty of spirit that people have.
So it's like, you know, you, you can live in a nice house and have this or whatever, but you don't really have to appreciate anything that you have.
But that's one thing with the people I worked with with Downs, like they have this incredible spirit about it.
And it's like, you can't teach that.
You can't teach that to mainstream kids that might not be able to do it.
But it's kind of infectious when you get everybody in the same group.
You know what I mean?
So we'd have like two kids that are on the spectrum or have Downs and come from the part of camp called Sparewood, which I worked at that spot also.
Sparewood?
Sparrowwood.
Okay.
And I was on staff one full summer living at Sparewood, like different group in every week.
And I'd have two campers that I'm responsible for for having them shit showered and shaved and ready to like come join everything.
And you never know what it was going to be.
So you start off as a camp attendee, and then you...
And then I started counseling when I was 15, actually a year earlier than I was supposed to.
And I counseled until I was 17. Okay.
And then for three years, I lived the whole summer at camp working as staff.
So living there, different group coming in every week for nine weeks or 10 weeks out of the summer.
And what that taught me about myself was invaluable.
Like, you know, I learned more about me than I ever thought that I would.
But so that was the thing.
When I was like 14, I was like, I want to play music and I want to build a camp.
Like, that's what I wanted to do.
So I wanted to, my impact that it had on me made me want to dedicate my life to building a place that does the same thing that I kind of experienced.
Like a summer camp.
Yeah.
Summer camp.
And then we do, you know, we built an amazing campus.
It's called Camp Southern Ground.
You have a camp now?
Yes.
Camp Southern Ground?
Yes.
Okay.
Yep.
Wow.
So you're able to make this happen.
What happens with music and you have to obviously stop being a counselor once music got busy?
Yeah, I had to stop being staff, but then I was like, my dream, well, first of all, was to be a successful musician, like just get to where, because I worked at this place in Delonigan, not far from the KKK dude's house called The Wagon Wheel.
And it was like a catfish fry house place, right?
And I washed dishes there.
So when you take a whole pan of catfish grease and you lay it in the dishwasher and you have one of those sprayers, you grab the handle, bro, and you spray that, dude, 80% of it gets on your face.
And so I was washing dishes in this catfish fry house place for like months.
And I was like, dude, there's got to be something better than this.
But the food was good.
Oh, the food was good.
Yeah.
Fried catfish and hush puppies and all the shit.
And then I'd clean the grease machine at the end of the night.
You got to filter all the grease and then take the filter, put this filter on there that has all the cracklings and all the stuff in it.
And then you spray that, bro.
And it's like, so I would come home like half soaking wet, driving my granddad's old like Oldsmobile or whatever it was, had the blue like plush seats, like giant ass heavy door.
Like when you shut that door, bro, it was like you could hear it two blocks away, man.
Oh, it was like when the tomb opened for Jesus, some of those doors.
It was like when you open it, it was the same thing.
But I would come home being soaking wet and like, I wore glasses back then too, bro.
So it was because of the grease or because of the green.
I couldn't know it's because I couldn't see.
Who would let a guy who can't see go into a dang grease?
I mean, it kept it out of my eyes, but I definitely wore the catfish on my face.
And then I worked as a cook at McDonald's for a while, too.
I was grilling at McDonald's, bro.
Really?
And did they have a grill at that time or what's the actual process?
It's a flat griddle thing.
And then you put them into a warmer, you know?
But I got fired from McDonald's because I had this manager at the time.
And her boyfriend would come up in like a blue 5.0 Mustang.
He had the hair, he had the whole thing.
And she'd fill up a whole bag full of fries for him, just like a whole scoop and throw it out the window to him or whatever.
So one day, every hour they throw away all the sandwiches that we made, right?
So every hour it's got to go in the trash.
So I was taking a chicken sandwich that was going to be thrown away.
And my buddy was there.
He was walking and he was like, I'll eat that.
And I was like, cool.
I slid it across the counter.
I wasn't trying to hide it or whatever.
So I got fired from McDonald's with possibility to rehire.
What the LD level?
First of all, that sounds like something that happens in a prison system, dude.
It's like with possibility of parole.
Like, there's a change.
You're good.
You can come back.
And what was it, a McFish?
Yeah.
Oh.
It was a McChicken.
Oh, McChicken.
Yeah.
Well, that's better.
If you slot a McFish to somebody, first of all, you're obviously a dirty sorcerer.
Okay.
Because who even eats a McFish except sometimes your mom does when your dad left.
That's the only person that ever ate a McFish.
Oh, it's so sad.
My mom would get it sometimes.
Times were hard for her then, right?
Times had never been easy for my mother.
And the wrapping paper on it was a little different.
It had a little more adult yellowish color.
It was a little more pastel than like the kind of electric kind of.
It's the color of agony.
Yeah, it was a little bit, it had, yeah, it just had more, it had been through a little more.
Right.
You know, it had been recycled, maybe.
And I would see my mom get the McFish and I'd be like, oh, well, things aren't going to go well at home.
You know?
Yeah.
But that's life, man.
But yeah, I can't believe you worked with them.
And then did you hope to get rehired?
No, I was pretty much after cleaning grease and then doing McDonald's and everything.
I was like, I don't want to smell like old food anymore.
You know, and I was like, there's got to be a better way to doing it.
And me and my buddy in high school, so we were singing together.
He's my best friend.
And dude, his family is the stories of his family, bro, like you would not even believe some of the stuff that his seven brothers and sisters, all their names start with R. All of them have seven letters in them, all of them.
But like the life story behind all them, dude, that's a whole episode of like three hours of talking about the stuff that happened with his family.
Really?
Unbelievable.
But he was my boy.
And so we sang together and we had a quartet in high school.
So we sang like barbershop, right?
Yeah.
There were three guys that could sing and choir and the other dudes were just in there because their girlfriends were in there and they were tone deaf and couldn't sing.
So we'd have like, we'd do literary meets and compete against these kids that are like, everybody can sing.
One dude can sing like bass like a grown ass giant man.
Yeah.
And then, but we always had one dude that was awful.
Like me and my two best friends in high school, Tyler and Radford, we would all sing together and we could lock in, but that we always had one dude that was awful.
And we never had one other dude that could ever sing that was in choir.
So we always had like, it was like the bad leg on the chair, right?
So that was, oh, but me and Radford sang like coffee houses and stuff together.
And, you know.
And did y'all have a little band at that point?
It's just me and him just playing guitars and singing.
And that was when.
Were you a good guitarist?
I would practice, man.
My brother took me to a bluegrass festival when I was 10, and they had like a guitar competition where kids would compete against each other.
Oh, wow.
And there were kids that were like eight years old, dude, that were just ripping the shit out of the guitar.
And I was like, fuck, if that kid can do that shit, I can't too.
So I would go sit on my porch in Dahloniga and practice.
Isn't it crazy how seeing something, it's like, it's so crazy the value of getting to see something.
Like even if you're talking about whether it's another culture, a skill set.
You know, I remember the first time I saw somebody do something, I was like, damn, dude, I could do something.
You know, it's just like was, it's unbelievable.
Or if somebody takes you to see like, yeah, oh, this guy plays music and then he show you like that's how little seeds get planted, but it really is.
It's like, it sounds ridiculous, but that's just the way it works.
I remember a guy showed me how to do one day I was at the, I was at YMCA.
I was at summer camp.
So we go to just YMCA camp and it was good, you know, but it was just a lot of people that would get hay fever and we'd all be like kind of in one building, you know?
And so I think it was just kind of safest way for the city to have us be in the summers because, yeah, it was back before they had like clariton or whatever.
Right.
And your eyes would just, you would just, you know, you would just like, and just weren't doing too good out there.
And they'd give you a soccer ball to be like 97 degrees.
You can't even see.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Moldy, like you, first summer camps I went to super early, like you'd be in a cabin that didn't have any air conditioning.
And it's like Georgia in the summertime.
It's like, you know, and you'd have the old denim mattresses.
You remember those?
Like it had like denim pattern on them, like stripes on the mattresses.
And they're all moldy and like the pillows are moldy and there's no thing.
So the first, the first four days, you just get used to sweating.
Yeah.
And then about day five or six, you kind of get used to it.
And then it's time to go home.
Dude, isn't there something nice, though, about there's something nice.
Like sometimes I'll be on vacation and the place I'm staying at Walmart Air Conditioning.
And the first night, it's kind of like pain in the butt.
The second night, but then you almost get like in sync with the universe a little bit.
Like I feel like my dreams pick up and like I feel like I'm a lot more in tune with things when I get to that point.
Does that make any sense to you?
Yeah.
Yeah, we adjust.
That's one thing that's weird.
I think that's why our immune systems go nuts is like humans because we're made to live out in freezing cold or super hot or be scraped up.
Like all that stuff builds our immune system.
So when we sit inside at like 72 degrees every day, all day, and then something hits our system, then it's like the faucet turns all the way on because it doesn't really know what to do, right?
You're just like, you don't have an iPad.
So your system thinks it's just time to make your nose run off, like, you know, all the way down onto your, down your pants.
But it's like we're made to adjust and adapt to those things.
So like being uncomfortable is actually what makes us like our systems like work right.
Yeah.
In a way.
Yeah, I got to do better.
I think I can do, well, I don't want to like be upset at myself about it, but I think I can do a little bit better at trying to be a little more uncomfortable at times with a lot of things for me.
It can be in a relationship.
It could be like George Kittle was on here and he talked about how he goes and gets in his ice bath every day first thing in the morning.
And I'm like, you are a person from the beginning of time.
You know, like you're not doing well, George.
But he's just like, I like to start my day off with something that's uncomfortable.
You know, Mike Tyson, I just heard him talking about it in an interview about like, cause that's the only way you start To see what fear is, and you start to get a little look at fear.
You might just think, Oh, I don't want to do this, but really, a little bit of that's fear.
And he's like, And that's how you start to get to work with fear.
I just thought that was kind of interesting.
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So then your band just takes off?
Like, how do you start to pop off for you, Zach?
So for 10 years, me and a drummer, well, six years, me and a drummer, we just made our first CD and we were called Far From Einstein.
And so just leaving college to go and do this thing.
And a friend of mine who works with us now loaned me like six grand to make the CD.
And so we make this record.
We find this dude that worked at Guitar Center had like a home studio and we went in and recorded it.
Yeah, that's me on the left there.
No way.
Yeah.
So we made this record far from Einstein.
And so me and my drummer, we were like, dude, so we're going to go to Panama City and we're going to make it.
And next year we're going to be huge, bro.
Dude, everybody in the South, if you could, the way to make it was through Panama City, dude.
It was like the natural light in New York.
Yeah.
So we had a van.
I sold my insurance policy that my dad had bought for me for like $1,200.
And I bought a, like an old Dodge Good Times van.
Like had the bubble windows.
It was a V8, but I'm pretty sure only like four of them worked.
Yeah.
And you could smell the gas just running out of it, like in the car.
And so I had, we made a thousand CDs.
Wow.
Yep.
It's the bubble window right there.
It had an orange shag carpet in it.
I still have it.
And so me and my, my dog, I had a Jack Russell at the time and then and my drummer, we got in there.
We had like our instruments.
We had what we call shits on sticks, which are just the speakers, like a powered PA system that had to run two speakers.
And we went down to Panama City and we're like, man, we're going to make it, bro.
So we drove around and we found this dude that had a daiquiri shack.
He had a trailer that had like a little RV that had a daiquiri shack in it, but he had power.
We saw like extension cords going to it.
So we're like, hey, man, will you let us plug in out here and set up?
So we plugged in and we'd sit out and we'd play for like eight hours an afternoon and a night for this daiquiri shack and playing.
And we were sleeping.
There was a house that had been hit by the hurricane.
And this is right on Roberts Drive, right?
Where like Spinnaker and La Vila and all that stuff was.
Trash, dude.
Where Tone Lowe cooked up with my girlfriend, too.
I'll say it, dude.
And that's a true story.
But anyway, sorry.
No, no.
So you guys play right out there and people showed up.
We slept on the back because we had our van, but we were sleeping in the van.
It wasn't that great.
But we found a house that was kind of abandoned, but the porch was intact on the back.
It would have been like wrecked.
So we sleep on the back of this porch and then the Sunglow Motel was across the street.
So we go get in their pool shower and like take a shower and sleeping out of the van.
And I remember this is like, we're just trying to make ends meet, right?
Like just make enough money to buy something to eat, you know, just to be able to hang out.
So it didn't cost anything to sleep on the porch of this house.
And I remember they were giving away barbecue Doritos.
That was when that flavor just came out.
And some dude was walking down the beach and giving out sample bags.
And he was like, dude, do y'all want these?
I don't want to have to hand them all out.
So he gave us a case of Doritos, bro.
But I was like somebody giving you a million dollars back then because it was like, dude, that's like a dollar a bag times whatever for us.
He had probably 36 bags.
And all I had was a gas card.
So we get white bread and bologna and mustard and natural light.
And that was our diet, bro.
But then we added Doritos to the sandwiches and that changed the game.
Living La Vida Loca.
Yeah, dude.
Welcome to France.
So while I was swimming out in front of this Sunglobe Motel, it was right on the beach, you know, right at this abandoned house.
I was swimming and I met these older ladies that were out there and I was just like, walked up to them, they were just standing out in the surf.
And I was like, What are y'all thinking about out here?
Whatever.
Ended up making friends with them.
Their mom owned a badass house that was down the road on Roberts Drive, and they had a garage that had a bed in it and a bathroom and everything.
So we made friends with these people.
And it was Muriel and J.B. Ellis was their names.
And they were, they were super old.
She was like probably 79 or 80 at the time.
And he was probably 76. He wasn't at home first.
So it was just her.
But she just like let us in her house and they had a badass like stereo system and 9 million bottles of liquor everywhere.
You open a cabinet, it was full of liquor.
So this is a senior citizen's home you guys are in now?
Yeah.
And so she was like, oh yeah, y'all can stay here, whatever.
And so we were looking for, so we had a place to stay, right?
So now we had air conditioning and this badass house.
And basically, if you want to come in and have drinks with them or whatever, and they go out dancing, they go to like this place called Salty's and they'd get up and dance and shag and get down, you know, but super amazing people.
But I was wondering what the husband was going to think like if she just brought in two stinky youths, van youths.
Yes.
Okay.
At a motel pool.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
Who have luckily come into 36 bags of Doritos.
Yeah.
You know, we had a big sleep.
My wife's leaving.
Yeah.
So we were worried about him coming home.
And, you know, we hung out with her for like a few weeks or whatever.
And we'd sit and play music for him in the house.
And he finally came home and he was cooler than she was.
They were both just amazing, dude.
So, and they supported us.
So then we found out there's a new restaurant that had opened that was run by the Israeli mob.
Oh, yeah.
And it was called Joey's.
And called America.
It was about one of their guys that their brothers that had died or whatever.
They named it after him.
But this was down right on Front Beach Road, you know.
And so we got a gig.
We auditioned for them and we set up on the deck.
They had a little, you know, outdoor deck and we played outside.
And that was the audition?
That was the audition to play for them, right?
So we set up and we played and they're like high fiving each other, whatever.
They drove Lexus's.
They had the like Gucci belts and the slick back hair and all the things.
But we started playing and they loved it.
Like they were like high five on each other, whatever.
So they gave us a chance.
So we played the first 10 nights for $150 a night for six hours a night.
Wow.
So that was our first gig at this place, Joey.
So we did the 15 or the 10 nights in a row.
We made $1,500 and we were like fucking poor rich.
Oh, you know, I went and bought some new Skechers, bro.
I was like, yeah, I think he bought some Doc Martens.
Buy you like some sandals or whatever.
Yeah.
And so we ended up like, so then we ended up keeping the gig there six nights a week.
So we, and then after that, I negotiated to get 300 bucks a night.
Let's talk business.
So then this dude from Illinois, this mattress salesman dude was in the bar one night and he's, he was, he looked a little bit like John Candy, but more awkward and more really weird.
He'd get really drunk and put his hat on backwards and roll his sleeves up.
And like, he was, he was interesting, but he just had a brand new condo and he's super lonely because he's pretty awkward dude, right?
Yeah.
So he let us move in his condo.
And so we're living in a brand new condo now that's like Middle Beach Road, just one road off the back there.
And we slept on air mattresses and like we were making cash and like doing what we're doing.
I remember calling my dad and like being like, I got a job or whatever.
And he's like, go, you know, go, go do it.
You know, dad, I'm living with an older guy from Illinois.
Exactly.
If you need a magnetic mattress pad, I got the guy now.
Dude.
Wow.
So, and so we just climbed that ladder in Panama City, bro.
We were doing good, but we were grinding, dude, six hours a night, man.
We played from eight till two in the morning.
Oh, at night.
Well, it takes so long, especially then, when you think this is probably before social media.
Oh, 100%.
Then think about the only way for something really to travel.
You know, people had to tell you, hey, you got to hear about these guys.
I mean, unless you got to, you know, through the gates to radio play.
Yeah.
And we were set up there playing six nights a week, six hours a night.
And we did that for, you know, the whole summer.
And then we go back to Atlanta and I played some bars in Atlanta.
And so we did a circuit for like, and so I had to create a business model, right?
This place didn't have live music.
So if I had grown up in Nashville and I was like trying to go get a gig for 60 bucks a night to play somewhere, I wouldn't have fucking been able to survive.
So what I do, I go to sports bars like a Wild Wings that didn't have live music.
And I say, you know, I'm going to come play here every Wednesday night.
And I just want the door.
Right.
So it doesn't cost you anything to have me here at first.
Like, let us come in and prove ourselves.
Give us a tab.
Like, give us like a $100 tab.
And so we come in and play there.
But fuck, after like six months, dude, on a Wednesday, we'd have 300 people coming on a Wednesday night.
And I was making five bucks at the door.
So we were making bank then.
So we did that three nights in Atlanta, two nights in Panama City, and two nights in Birmingham.
Every week.
Every week, seven days a week for a long time, six days a week.
I had to hire a dude from Mississippi State, like this old football player dude who'd get bad road rage, man.
Really?
Was it TJ Malwany?
Was that his name?
No, his name was Keith Lozier.
But he drove us, dude.
I hired him just to just to hang with us and drive.
So I'd sleep against the window in my truck.
My brother co-signed with me to get like a 1500 Silverado, like a red like the mini extended cab, like the little baby extended cab.
Yeah, that little sex launcher, baby.
I'd get that thing.
Yeah.
Beautiful.
Yep.
So I had that and a covered trailer with my gear in it.
So we were like stepping up, right?
We were out of the Good Times van, which got like four miles to the gallon, bro.
It's like, it was.
So we graduated.
That's a big step.
Yep.
That's a big step up, man.
And we could get around and we were just hustling, man.
But six years, we grinded like that for six years, just like playing the same house gigs in three states, just grinding, grinding, selling those CDs for five bucks a piece and then gaining tip money and whatever drugs people would throw into the tip jar at the end of the night, you know.
And at that time, were you like crossing paths with other musicians?
Like trying to think of Jason Moraz was coming out.
I think he might have been out of, or like John Mayer.
He was out of Georgia.
Was there any like, did you cross paths with any of those?
There was nobody in these circus because the places we played, no one, they never had live music.
So I didn't know, I didn't know there were like a rule or way anybody else did it.
I didn't know how anybody else did it because we just fucking created it ourselves.
Right.
So we didn't know like what we're supposed to do because we just figured out something that worked for us.
But we add value to the places because if you own a restaurant, like if you make bank on a Wednesday night, that's all cake because you lose your ass through the week and then Friday, Saturday, you make it up.
So, you know, these places were stoked.
And I remember when we had outgrown playing the sidelines up in Kennesaw, Georgia, we'd outgrown it and it was time and we moved on to like playing theaters and playing, you know, honky-tonks and stuff like that, like bigger places.
The manager, when I left, because they were making good money there, the owner, whatever, left me a voicemail and I saved it.
It's on all my old phones, but it was like, after all I've done for you and all this shit and whatever, I hope you fail.
And I saved that voicemail and it's just, it's just funny.
What a negative kind of outlook, huh?
Well, he was making a lot of money off of it.
Yeah, but still, he could have just thought also, man.
Yeah, I'm glad for you guys or whatever.
But I guess, yeah, maybe that's using it.
But that made it even more like kind of entertaining to us.
And also just like, you know, I didn't know where I was going.
All I knew is that I just wasn't going to quit.
Yeah.
But it got, you know, it's that law, like 10,000 hours, whatever you do for 10,000 hours, you're going to get good at, right?
So playing so many nights, so many hours, but I also taught me the appreciation of like loving all the people, like the dudes cleaning up the bar or the waitresses and whatever it is.
Like I was connected to those people.
They became like family in those places.
So for me, just treating people good was like that.
It taught me to like, those people are sometimes the only people listening to you at the end of the night when you're playing, you know, because I play some shitty gigs, dude.
Like the worst.
Really?
Oh, the worst.
Like, no one there.
You drove eight hours to go play a show and you set up and it's just like, you know.
Do you ever play during a fight and you fights break out and you have to keep playing?
Yeah.
And I've had to join fights like in the middle because friends are involved in it.
Really?
In the middle of it.
Why?
Because y'all don't have a good percussionist in the area.
Yeah.
Dude, there's some stories, man.
The amount of bar fights you've seen when you play in bars for 10 years is a lot.
And your friends are bartenders and stuff like that or whatever, and you'll see some shit about to go down.
There's like three dudes that came in from one of the nights.
So this is at Dixie Tavern, right?
So I ended up- It's in Georgia.
It's in Marietta, Georgia.
Okay.
It's right on Cobb Parkway, right where the Brave Stadium is now, the new Brave Stadium.
It's right down the road from there.
But that was where I cut my teeth.
So as we got out of that circuit of like Panama City, Birmingham, or whatever, then we started playing around Atlanta more often.
And I had like three or four house gigs around Atlanta and actually talked them into building the stage that was in there because they didn't have live music.
So they built the stage and we would play there.
And one of the nights, these two dudes from Miami had come in, like one tall, skinny dude and one kind of heavy dude.
And so one of my buddies was bartending at the time and ended up having words with him or whatever.
And so the tall, skinny dude called one of the female bartenders who was married to another bartender that was there, a different guy, a really bad word, called it a C word.
Oh, yeah.
And so it was off.
And so the bouncers, so you know all the bouncers, you know, like nobody's, you're not going to get skull.
Like you're not going to get curb stomped because nobody's like looking out or whatever.
So it was a little safer place to fight.
Yeah, yeah.
And then we had off-duty friends, off-duty cops that would come in and hear us play and stuff like that.
So they're, they're about, so they, we come in, and I remember this, this night, especially because somebody had given me like a little chocolate mushroom, right?
Yeah, baby.
So it's like, love you, baby.
So it's like right before, like two or three songs before the end of the, of the, the night, right?
So I ate a little piece of chocolate, right?
So whatever.
And so we get done playing the song or whatever, and things getting a little HD, you know, it's looking good or whatever.
And then these two dudes from Miami called her that name and the bouncers are trying to throw him out or whatever.
And one of my buddies has the big one kind of, he's got his arm pushed up on his neck, holding him against the wall.
And this other dude, this tall, skinny one, who I think he's on met because he was crazy strong.
Yeah.
So he's like swinging at everybody.
So when I was in, in, in college, I did judo at West Georgia.
So this dude's swinging at everybody.
There's like six dudes in a circle.
And this dude's just like swinging and just trying to hit somebody, right?
Oh, yeah.
So he's turning around.
He swings one of my buddies and misses whatever.
So I get on his back.
I get him in a rear naked choke.
And I'm starting to be special because for my chocolate, right?
So I've got this dude and I remember the feeling of his warm neck.
Right.
Yeah.
And so, and I was, I was bigger than I was probably like 250.
You know, I was bigger boy.
No, just, I mean, I was strong, but I was, I was not.
Thicker.
Yeah.
So, so this dude, he goes down to the ground with me on his back.
And then this dude is methed up enough, got that super strength, stands up, picks me up with me on his back and gets up.
And so then I, then I started using my back.
I full on just like cranked it out, right?
So I kind of felt it strictly.
My feet were off the ground.
And so, yeah, he picked me up.
Oh my God, this is like a cowboy meth strong, like a bull ride meth dude.
Yeah, let me lasso that pipe, huh?
Yeah.
So I'm squeezing this dude and I finally feel him start to go limp or whatever.
And my feet touch the ground.
So I just let go of the dude at that point.
And this dude's standing, right?
Like this.
And so there's a planter, a brick planter that's right outside Dixie Tavern.
This dude fell like a tower, bro.
Back.
Hit his forehead on the bricks, bro.
Cut his head open.
I'm tripping.
The dude hits the ground.
Pool of blood starts coming out from this dude's head.
And when you start to put it back in.
And I think, and then, and then I think at that point, I just kill this dude, right?
So I run in the back and I go get in the beer cooler where the kegs are, bro.
And I'm sitting in the cooler with all the kegs are.
I was in that the cops can't find you?
Yeah, that they weren't going to find me with a thermal scan because I was getting hypothermia in there, bro, all by myself.
And so everybody's looking for me or whatever, trying to find me.
Was it a depth finder or something?
So I'm sitting next to this cooler.
And after about 30 minutes, bro, and I just keep seeing this blood going, like coming out of Steve's head.
And I'm sitting there and I'm shivering or whatever.
And somebody finally comes in and is like, are you okay?
Whatever.
And they're like, just stay in here or whatever.
So I'm like, fuck.
So then I get really cold.
So I'm like, you know, I'm at like 35 degrees by then, bro.
So I'm like, so I come out and I walk out and I look outside and there's ambulance, fire truck, police, like the whole place is crawling with like, you know.
Yeah, federales.
Yeah.
so my buddy Mike was an off-duty cop and he was there.
He told the cops that he hit the dude and knocked him out and he hit the thing.
So I was off the hook or whatever, but that was a wild trip.
So this dude's on the ground and right when they started to pull a gurney up or whatever, to put this dude on a gurney and move him because they didn't touch him because they thought his neck was broken or whatever, he woke up and he runs to this bush.
Cops are all out there at this point.
He runs out to this bush and starts shuffling around in this bush and cops are fucking pulling out their guns and shit and whatever.
The dude pulls a gun out of the bush.
Uh-uh.
Grabs a gun and the cop fucking knocks it out of his hand, grabs him, puts him in cuffs and all this shit or whatever.
But that dude, that dude was close to pulling that thing out and shooting somebody.
He could have shot somebody earlier if he hadn't had that opportunity to ride on his back.
Exactly, yeah.
That was wild, bro.
But there's a lot of nights like that that I've had playing.
What song were y'all playing when this happened?
Dude, I don't remember.
It was over because I had just gotten done and it was like they were just did last call and they were kind of clearing people out and I don't think that they were ready to leave.
Oh, that's kind of the most dangerous time.
It's that weird time when the bar is like, you know, it's kind of closed.
People are like, if they've been talking to a girl, they're trying to get in their last words or something.
It's almost like the final round of like a dating show.
Someone's violently drunk.
Someone has been abandoned by their friends or spouse.
Some guy's just been doing Coke and is just chewing off the last few inches of his face in the corner somewhere.
He finally shows back up.
That's why I would never want my kids to work in a restaurant or a bar because I've seen all that shit like firsthand.
And what happens after all that and like what people do to keep bartending and drinking shots.
Like nobody can drink a thousand shots a night without doing a bunch of blow.
Yeah.
And so it's around everywhere.
It's, it's, and it's cash money and people are, you know, it's, it's were people ripping it pretty hard?
Were you guys partying pretty hard?
I wasn't, but there, as soon as I saw that the first time, then I started seeing it everywhere.
Every bar, dude.
It's just like that was all going on the whole time and I had no idea.
Yeah.
It's kind of like when you buy a, when you get a car, then you see them all the time.
Exactly.
Exactly.
It's like the first time you see somebody do cocoa, you're like, oh, I see everybody doing this everywhere.
People aren't just kind of casually touching each other's hands like that in the bar for no reason.
Yeah.
Well, my bass player early on, I'd get done playing him and people would come up and go, hey, man, let me holler at Donnie, you know, or let me holler at Jimmy or whatever the dude's name was.
And I was like, why do you need to holler at him?
And so it turns out he was dealing blow at my shows.
So I had to fire him.
Oh, yeah.
He could play fast, though, bro.
He could play fast, dude.
And I had no idea this was happening, right?
So I let go, but that's how I met John Hopkins.
He was the first guy that was in my band that I have now.
John Hopkins.
Yeah.
It's not the lymphoma guy, is it?
The same name.
It is?
John Hopkins, yeah.
Oh, I met him at Jimmy John's.
Yeah, yeah.
You guys played a special event there.
So Hops.
Oh, yeah.
Hops, the first one that was in my band, but I was recording with him, and I told him about my bass player, and he was like, well, I can play a little bass.
I can sit in.
So, you know, in February, it'll be 20 years of him sitting in.
Wow.
But he's one of the best singers, dude.
Best fucking background singer, period.
But he had a band called Brighter Shade, which was like this kind of heavier metal band that was badass.
He could scream and, you know, was legit.
So that was the beginning of the band that I have now.
He was the first member coming into that.
But because it wouldn't have happened if my bass player hadn't been dealing blow.
Damn.
Yeah.
That guy could have still been with you.
Maybe.
Yeah.
I don't know, dude, his tics would have...
All the ticks made sense after that.
He had that pentameter on him, huh?
Some people get a little iambic, bro.
If you have a little too much blow cane, baby, I've been there.
I start, damn, I turn into a damn harmonica, son.
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Yeah, one thing I notice about when your band plays, dude, it's not just you.
Yeah.
It is everybody.
Yeah.
It is a chorus.
It is a re, it's like it's a super ensemble vibe.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think if you're doing it right, you're the worst dude in the band, right?
So you have people that are in your band that could do all this amazing shit.
And you want to show them off, man.
You want to let them do what they're best at and let people see that, you know?
But I think what I'm good at is just figuring out how to make that accessible, like being able to just like find the things that I feel like are going to be the most impressive they can do and just letting them do it, man.
Letting them do their thing.
You know, that's really what makes our band special is the musicianship of the people that I have.
Everybody in my band's a ninja, man.
And I create things.
I'm not really like a theory guy.
I definitely had my party days when I was supposed to be studying theory because I went to West Georgia University.
I went there on a voice scholarship to sing classical music.
But then my roommate that I was with when they put me there in the dorm was this dude that smoked weed every five minutes from Tennessee.
So I'd never been around that really.
I saw it twice in high school or whatever, but then this dude and then he's just in there just puffing and rolling out.
Yeah, then there was acid around and then there was all this shit.
So I was supposed to be learning about theory and music, but I never liked the rigidity of that.
Like you can turn music into math, but it's not that to me.
Like I want to make you feel something.
So I got all these amazing people in my band that can tell you, oh, here's the math, right?
Right.
Like my bass player can listen to a song and write the chart for it as he listens one time down.
All the notes, the timing, the thing, just but that's not you.
That's not me because I don't, I want to be able to try to transcend a feeling.
And then they can tell us what the math is and they'll make a chart and then everybody can play it.
Like I can play a song for him on my guitar and then he gives it to my band and they have a chart and then the first time we ever play it, it's a song like everybody playing on it.
But I never had a class in school that taught me how to use my creativity.
Never had a class ever.
It's all copy this shit.
Copy what Beethoven did.
Copy what Mozart did.
Copy Bach.
Copy all these things.
And it's like, what would it have been like for me if I'd had a class that was like, here's how you write a song.
Here's how you take what you feel and put it into something like that.
Like it was never, there weren't classes for creativity.
There was art class.
You can make some shit with some strings or like string some macaroni and shit together.
Oh yeah.
Or make a, dude, we had a class one time.
We had to make, this was insane, casts, right?
Like body casts or whatever.
And they had one girl put hers on.
It didn't take it off for like 14 weeks, dude.
This lady, everybody at a certain point forgot that we'd even made it for class, right?
Because it was just one small thing we're doing one week.
People thought she was handicapped for like three months, dude.
I bet it smelled awesome in that, bro.
I bet she had big hairs.
She had those like caterpillar hairs growing in her legs, too, when she got that thing off.
Never had a hair on her leg, just took it off and had a full bush all the way down her leg.
It had a little bit of, I don't want to say fern coming out of the edge of it.
Yeah.
But it definitely, she had her own, yeah, she was making her own little land before time over there, it felt like.
Yeah, growing an ecosystem, man.
Yeah, she had a little bit of ecosystem going on.
What else was I thinking about?
Did you guys open up for some bands when you first started out?
Yeah, so that was like a big bucket list thing for us because I'm still just a music fan.
So getting to hang out with people that were heroes to me musically, like musicians that I love were like superheroes.
Yeah.
But they're real life, you know?
And so if you run into them somewhere, you're like, oh my God, there's Superman.
There's, you know, whatever it is.
So for me, that was some of the craziest milestones for me when we started having success and going is like, we're just chilling with our heroes, you know, and playing on stage with them.
And then you get to be friends with them.
And then that's even more weird.
It's like somehow appear with it.
But then you realize that they're just normal dudes too.
And then it's like, and the greatest ones are always the coolest ones, man.
They're always just like down to earth and cool.
Yeah.
Like I knew you guys had this song about Jimmy that was kind of in the Jimmy Buffett vein recently, you know?
Did you got, did you have a relationship with him ever?
Yeah, I was good friends with Jimmy.
He was, he was a mentor for me, and he was, he was incredible, you know, and I've had him on some of my songs too.
We had a song Knee Deep and we did, he was on Same Boat.
We did a version of that with him just a few years ago.
But there aren't many people that I could call and ask certain questions to that could give you like a real answer to that question.
You know what I mean?
I'm sure it's like your friends that are Big stand-up comedians and people like that that understand the lifestyle that you live, that have done it and done it on such a big level and built an amazing brand.
You know, we did crossroads with Buffett too when we first got going.
But yeah, Jimmy, Jimmy was.
Here's the kind of guy Jimmy was.
One of my buddies was trespassing on his property fishing, standing on the rocks on the back of his place in Key West, fishing on the thing.
Jimmy saw him out there.
They're like watching a game inside or something.
Jimmy walks outside to where the guy is and says, you need this kind of lure, gave him a lure and is like, and you need to throw it over there.
And then he went back in his house.
So he didn't kick the guy out for fishing in the back of his yard.
He's like, let me help you succeed at what you're trying to do, even though you're trespassing on my place.
The guy wasn't there trying to like mess with him.
You know what I mean?
But that's a good example of Jimmy and his spirit, man.
He was such a baller.
And dude, in the 70s, dude, he was a gangster, bro.
Really?
Gangster.
Flying drugs from Cuba and fucking had operations, flying shit in his plane.
I wish I could do it.
Dude, Mac McInale told me a story.
They were flying, I think he said from Jamaica or somewhere, and they didn't have a seat in the plane for one of the roadies, right?
So they gave him an eight ball in trade for letting him ride where the luggage was because they were just flying a couple hours to get to where they needed to go, but they needed to get him there.
And they ended up picking up somebody else that needed to sit inside.
So they're like, look, bro, if you'll ride where the luggage is, man, here's an eight ball.
Yeah, yeah.
If you'll sit back over here with this Samsonite.
Yeah, yeah.
So he's in the cargo bay, right?
So the plane takes off and the dude's cruising in there.
But they didn't tell that dude.
They had to land real quick to clear security.
So the plane takes off and then it lands again, like in 20 minutes, right?
And then he's looking out the crack in the fucking door because he's in the luggage bay.
And he sees dudes walking with fucking machine guns and shit outside.
So the dude's like, fuck, they're going to catch me with these fucking drugs in here.
So the dude just toots the whole fucking battery.
Sorry, dude.
God.
Snorts the whole fucking eight ball, eats it, whatever he does, fucking down the, down the hatch, bro.
And then the plane takes off.
Does anybody do that?
And then the plane takes off again.
And it's in the air for like an hour and a half, right?
And Mac said when they landed, dude, and they opened this luggage compartment that this dude crawled out of there and he looked like a bruised banana.
This dude had been fucking squeaking in there, getting bashed by roller suitcases and shit.
Like, you know, not a lot of oxygen or whatever.
True nature's child.
Pull up that TikTok of that bear getting out of that, coming out of hibernation, dude.
You seeing this deal?
This bear, I think, has just got out of hibernation.
Beautiful animal.
I mean, this is real.
It looks like Ron White getting up out there.
Yeah, that looks like Ron White after some good ayahuasca.
God damn.
He just lost a sideburn right there, shaking it out, man.
God, dude, that's fun, man.
That's fun, bro.
Stories, man.
That's a great story.
And one of my buddies, his dad went to prison for a long time helping with one of those operations that he had.
And so for 20 years, Jimmy raised him.
And so, and then he ended up being like the artist that made all the stuff in the Margaritavilles, like built the planes that were crashing into the things, painted it all, did it or whatever.
Like that whole, like there's a world in Key West that Jimmy was, you know, responsible for.
And once you know the local people there and you know the people, like it's such an extraordinary thing.
And so when Jimmy, when I heard that Jimmy was about to pass and his main guy had texted me and said he's about to exit the stage, that hit me hard because I realized like all of his crew, all of his family, all of his business, everything, there was this hole that was there.
And it hit me hard, man.
I was at home and it was like midnight or something.
And I got up and I had to walk around and I just started writing.
I just had to write.
I had to like, because I felt that hole, you know, if something happens to me, there's a lot of families that depend on me to be solid and me to be there.
And then without me there, there's all of these things that are necessary.
I can't do without them, but they can't do it without me the way that it is, the way that it's set up.
So it's like, man, I just felt this hole there.
And I, and that's when I was writing about it all and ended up meeting up some other guys that had started a tune.
And that's, we wrote this last one called Pirates in Paris, but that's about Jimmy.
That's about, you know, saying goodbye to him and what he created.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was listening to this yesterday.
Wow, man.
Yeah, it's that's so crazy to have one of your heroes become a friend and then they are gone.
You know, I mean, it's just like, I don't know.
Life gets scary to me like that.
Every day is precious, man.
That's why it's hard to like sacrifice.
Like the people you keep in your circle is like directly reflects and results in like whether you're successful or where you're going and what you're doing.
Because if you just hang out with this dude because you used to, you know, shoot natural light together and whatever because of this thing, it's like that you're not hanging out with expanders.
You know what I mean?
Like being around people that are expanders and that you fucking share energy with and you can lift each other up.
Everybody has hard times, but like that directly results in your success.
And as you trim that circle down and keep it tight with people that you just, you know, you resonate that.
It's like-minded.
Like keeping like-minded people around you is like directly related to your success because you hang out with sick people, you're going to get sick or you hang out with people that aren't motivated.
Where'd you learn that lesson?
Do you learn that lesson or is it something that you always kind of had?
I learned that lesson, dude.
Everything I've ever learned, I learned the hard way, bro.
Punching myself in the face the whole way, doing it, man.
And then finally, like, oh, wow, maybe I shouldn't punch myself in the face anymore, you know?
But I'm a curious person, man.
I'm always curious, like, how things work, how things operate.
Like, you know, I brought some knives actually for you.
Last time I gave you a little one, right?
Yeah, you did, man.
We got a kind of one for the yard.
Oh, my God.
as well.
But making things and, like, you know, finding a rabbit hole, man, finding something that there's always another level of, you know, and figuring out how to.
Oh, man.
So you just push with your thumb to pull that thing out.
It kind of locks in right there, that little tab.
Just push that.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
So I have a knife company called Southern Grind.
It's all production knives, but that's kind of like the replacement for a hatchet or, you know, cutting limbs and things like that.
Or, you know, whatever.
Somebody reaches in your car trying to carjack you too.
Yeah, whatever you need to do.
You're finger to see me, homie.
That's right.
I'll freaking take a knuckle off of some little cat if he's trying to get my watch.
That's right.
Wow.
This is you're you have a company that makes these.
Yeah, yeah.
Southern Grind.
This is a real knife?
Oh, yeah.
It's sharp.
Oh, yeah, boy.
Those also throw really well, too, if you like to throw knives, yeah.
Dude, one thing at a time, man.
I just got a hold of this thing.
I'm going to have to register this online.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Thanks, bro.
Yeah, man.
This is really cool.
You know, one thing else that I got really nice one time, not to take your gift and talk about another one.
John Popper one time gave me a harmonica.
And I thought that was pretty cool.
Did he leave some grease in it?
Had he been sucking on it?
It looked like it had a little bit of work done on it.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, like it had a little bit of lung.
He killed on the harmonica, bro.
He was so good.
Yeah, he was so good.
But wow, to say that I had that and Zach Brown's knife.
Yeah, that's cool, man.
Yeah, I guess I can use it in the yard.
I just got a couple of birdhouses.
So I'm sure that nature is going to be flaring up back there a little bit more.
What do you consider success now?
Like, what's kind of your view of success?
You've gotten to have a lot of commercial success, you know?
Like, what do you think about success?
Man, my first main thing is my family, man.
My kids, you know, just showing up and being there for them.
I get them half the time, and I'm a wusband.
So I live 10 minutes away from their mom, and we just rock co-parenting together.
But when I have my kids, man, and it's a great thing.
It's just like humbling and whatever, because I'm basically like the house bitch when I'm home, man.
I'm there to help take them to school and pick them up and hang with them.
And I just, that's my first priority is making sure that the time I have with them is like the greatest that it can be.
So that's half my life.
And the other half is like I tour, I adventure, I spearfish, you know, I bow hunt.
I do things that really fulfill me, but it's really about just being out in the wild because that's what refills my cup, man.
That's what makes me feel like if I'm doing something that's so engaging with me that I have to, there's no other chatter, you know, I don't have any noise that's happening or whatever.
So success for me means like obviously being there for my kids and then trying to be creative, trying to still write good songs, trying to take care of myself, take care of my body.
Like I want to be able to do that stuff when I'm super old, you know, investing in it.
Like being a little uncomfortable every day will save you from being uncomfortable and miserable your whole life, from being all bound up and not feeling good.
So I did do it today.
I didn't want to.
God, I didn't want to, but I did.
But that's what it takes, man.
But you know how you feel and you kind of get momentum in those areas where you feel good.
So anything that I can do, I work with an amazing regenerative medicine doctor and he's got me on a good peptide regimen.
I take NAD.
I take, I do IV every month with exosomes in it, Were you telling me about this?
I think so.
Yeah.
Were you telling me about this?
So basically, stem cells create exosomes when they're like go to an area to heal things.
But they have.
Oh, it helped your shoulder.
Were you telling me that?
Yeah.
Completely healed my shoulders up getting some stem cells and getting things like that.
Like, you know, there's a lot of controversy around stuff like that for people, but, you know, you can't argue with results, you know, and you find people that you can trust and they're like, hey, I think you should try this.
So exosomes are extracellular vesicles generated by all cells and they carry nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, and metabolites.
They are mediators of near and long distance intercellular communication in health and disease and affect various aspects of cell biology.
So I don't know what that means.
Keeping your cells really healthy.
And dude, I've noticed for my voice, like once a month I get an IV, they draw blood, they do testing on me and stuff.
And then they give me about six vials of those little exosomes, man.
And dude, that thing, it's like.
And what can you, you can't put them in like a vape pan or something, can you?
You can put them in a nebulizer, actually, and you can inhale them in a nebulizer form that way for your voice.
But you can, you, getting them, getting them this way has made my voice stronger, man.
So I just want to be able, when I'm like 80 years old, dude, I don't want to look like I'm 80, man.
I want to feel good.
I want to be able to run up and down mountains.
I want to be able to pole vault, just the things that are, you know, that normal 80-year-old people can't do.
Yeah, I love that, man.
Now, that's a good definition of success.
You know, being able to spend time with your kids, being able to still be active and do the things that you want to do, you know, I think it seems like a really good definition to me.
Oh, tell me about this.
So one thing I'm thinking, why do sometimes bands do covers and sometimes they don't?
Some of this may seem like novice level questions to you, but I just am curious about that.
Because sometimes audience members are like, do a couple more, you know?
But then sometimes they're like, oh, that's too many.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know, man.
I love other people's music so much that when we get to like reinterpret it and do it our way, like I love every show that we play, we're going to play three or four cover songs at least, you know, because it's kind of like tipping the hat to people that you really love and does something.
And also you can read the crowd, man, when you start playing it.
You start a good cover and they know it's coming and they're just, they start going crazy.
Like I love that, but I love trying to do it in a different way, like trying to figure out some way to like make it special, make it your own.
And I think that comes from me just being a music fan.
It's like, you know, I got three hours to keep these people engaged.
Like what can I do mixed in with our songs that are going to make it like the best night possible, you know?
And so every time we come to a city, we have new covers that we worked up to do.
So we don't get the same show twice.
You know, it's competitive, man.
It's like if people are going to buy our ticket and the next time we come, buy our ticket again.
You can't be half drunk on stage.
You can't be, you know, slurring and whatever.
It's just a waste.
It's like you don't respect those people enough to give them everything you got.
So for us, it's like, we're like athletes.
Like we go after it like we're going to be ready, bro.
We're going to come back and we're going to give them every inch, you know, even if it's two.
Yeah.
If that's all you got, man.
Hey.
That's a lot in some regions.
You know, fruit by the foot.
Do you have to ask another band before you play their cover or not?
No.
Once the song's released, you can cover it, record it.
You can do whatever you want with it.
Yeah.
But sometimes we'll get hit by those people.
They're like, I heard this cover.
Like James Taylor sent me a text and was like, we did Sweet Baby James.
And he sent me like a text and was like, great job on, you know, Sweet Baby James.
But he talks in license plate things.
So he'll text you like nine letters.
And if you read him, it sounds like a sentence.
So he texts me like that.
And it's like, it takes me a while to figure out what he's saying, you know, because he talks in license plate letters sometimes.
Oh, he does?
Yeah.
And just like acronyms or something?
Yeah, pretty much.
But it's, you know, it's like, be as you are, you know, be as you are, or you are in NML, like you're an animal.
Oh, wow.
Like those kind of things.
And it's kind of a thing he does.
And then he told me that he has a song.
He has a song called Be As You Are.
And literally the whole sentence of the chorus is all a license plate thing.
Wow.
So they just had, did you see that song that's that guy's name?
Korean dictator Ho Chung?
Oh, Kim Jong.
Kim Jong-un released this song, Friendly Father.
It's really him?
About he is great and a friendly leader.
Yep.
Exactly like Naomi Park talked about, bro.
Everybody's happy and having a good time.
If they didn't throw those flowers up in the air right, they were going to definitely cut all their legs off, bro.
Well, you kind of wonder.
Show a little bit more of the video first, brother.
It's really...
There's alligators underneath there all around them.
Just looking right at the lady.
Let me, I'm going to read some of the lyrics.
There's one awesome part where he hugs a couple of children.
Hold on, let's see if we can get to that.
And it's just so crazy.
And I'm making, I don't know firsthand.
I'm just by what I've heard.
Yeah.
It's, you know what I mean?
I don't know.
So I don't want to be getting hit up by the.
Look, I think it's safe to say the guy's kind of a risky landlord.
Okay?
I would say, I think that's safe to say.
Go.
Yeah, there's a part...
Right there.
Just a lot of it.
There's him with a lot of children.
He could have been.
The song is called Friendly Father.
He definitely has a bit of a her him.
He definitely has a bit of a her-they vibe, I feel like.
He goes, let's sing about Kim Jong-un.
These are the lyrics.
Our great leader.
Let's boast about Kim Jong-un, our friendly father.
Warm-hearted like your mother, benevolent like your father.
He is holding his 10 million children in his arms.
Is he holding 10 million children in his arms or he's holding 10 million children's arms?
That's a good question.
Wow, that's so kooky.
Could you imagine being in a place where you just have to, it's almost like Disney World probably, but you know, where you're just like.
But as soon as that scene's over, you got to go back to real life, man.
You got to go back to what it's really like.
I want him to come on the podcast so bad.
He's probably one of the top guests.
I would love to hear that.
It would be wonderful.
You know, I would love to see, because he could be doing a great job.
It's like we don't know a lot of what we see is intel.
A lot of what we see is bad AI.
This reminds me of the naked gun.
It's like.
Remember that?
Naked Gun was so good.
Remember how good Naked Gun was?
It's funny when you go back and watch those things and you remember it's not exactly as you remember it now, but it's still.
They're horrible now.
A lot of them are.
You talked about fitness, man.
Yeah, when I look at even just pictures of there from when you had your first band, Farron, what was it called?
Far from Einstein.
Far from Einstein.
To now you have a different, your fitness is more fitness.
Yeah, and I mean, that's really just in the last probably five or six years, man.
Just really trying to dial myself in, man.
I'm trying to be, you know, after I went through my divorce was like the darkest, craziest time ever for me.
Was it really?
Did you want to get divorced or not?
I did.
Sorry if it's an uncomfortable question.
No, no, you don't have to answer it.
I did, but it was one of those things that I didn't, I didn't want to.
It's one of those weird things as a man where you feel like you can't leave and you can't stay.
And you can't, because of pressure and things that you put on yourself, like the kids don't know what it means.
You know what I mean?
Like the kids don't know what it means that you're getting a divorce or whatever it is.
That's horrible.
Yeah, that part.
And so knowing that it's leaving the wake of those type of things, but knowing whatever.
But I had a couple friends of mine that had that had taken their own lives.
And it made me realize like, that ain't ever going to be me, man.
You were caught in that space of not knowing what to do.
Well, yeah.
And whatever was eating at them, that they couldn't face it enough to like get out of the situation, regardless of whatever judgment it may cause, regardless of whatever it is, man.
So for me, that was like a sign that I saw of like, okay, I got to get, I got to get out of this or whatever.
But the place that it put me in and even my own choices through the last few years of it, like before that happened and things like that, like just darkness and coming out of it and feeling like, you know, I can't be like this anymore.
And it was weird because I'm not one of those people that goes and like gets my cards read and shit like that.
But I ended up getting my cards read at some lady in LA, like some older lady who read my cards and was like, showed me a picture.
And it was like, it was a card that had like a nice house and a lawn and like kids running around.
It's like, this is what your life looks like from the outside to other people.
But that's really not what it is.
And if you don't get out of this, you're going to get a serious physical illness and you're going to die.
So if you don't, and I felt that because I'd carried around all this weight and guilt and shame and shit, like it felt like someone was squeezing my heart, like a hand was around it, like physically felt like it was clamped down on.
And I could, I could feel that.
And I was just, so I came out of that and just like, whatever, whatever it takes to get to the other side of this river that I'm in right now, that's just beating my ass right now.
I got to keep swimming.
I got to get to the other side of it.
And then, and then I got to figure out what's going on with me.
Like, what do I, what do I need to do to be there solid for my kids and to be there for their mom and like to provide and to be able to do those things.
Like, what can I do to try to get myself on track where I feel like find myself again?
Because I think in the middle of it, in the middle of the codependency around all of it, I had lost who I was around all of the stress that was around that and all the businesses and all the other shit.
It was literally like just taking fire from all sides.
So coming out of that, I can't.
It sounds exhausting even to listen.
I mean, even just, I can't even, it sounds like a lot.
It's, it's hard, man.
And it takes a, you know, it takes a lot of grace, but you find out who in your circle like is really there for you and who really wasn't there, but was around.
And then, but coming out of that, man, I was like, I want to, I, you know, I quit drinking the year before I actually got divorced just to, just to be clear.
You know, I wanted to be clear and know exactly what was going on and see the thing.
So that was, you know, six and a half years ago.
And I had to get clear and I had to see the pattern and see what was going on.
And I realized that it wasn't going to work.
And like, the only way out of this is through it.
So just go through it and do it.
Was it hard to go through it?
Is it hard to go through something like that with grace?
Like, how do you do it and best honor your partner, like your spouse and stuff in it?
Because it sounds like that was something you took into consideration.
Yeah, you have to try it.
I just had to ask her, you know, what do you want?
What do, what, you know, obviously other than us not, you know, getting along, like, you know, what, what do you need?
And just what she asked for, I gave her and just did my best to try to do that.
And it's taken time to heal the relationship and things.
And she's an amazing lady, you know, and I'm blessed to have her as the person that, you know, that helps raise our kids and to have that like a solid human to be there to help me to do that.
And, you know, I'm grateful.
I mean, I'm grateful for everything.
Like in the rear view, everything hard that's happened has like served us somehow.
It's just really hard to see it at the time.
But I came out of that phase of my life, like wanting, okay, what can I do to make myself be better, feel better?
I did like three years of plant medicine journeys.
I did, you know, lots of therapy.
Anything that I could do to try to just like shed these feelings, you know, shed this like weight that I carried around and like reprogram my belief system, reprogram myself so that I could be present and so I could be, I could find my love for myself and for my creativity and for these things again.
So where's been the last six years?
Wow.
Where, um, yeah, where did you go try plant medicine at?
Did you go to other country?
I did.
I've done it in different places.
I've what's something you learned from it?
That might be a better question.
Yeah.
Because I've done it a few times and I've learned some pretty cool stuff or things that I have been helpful for me.
I hired a life coach and I worked with her for six months like intensively.
And, you know, she incorporated the plant medicine into our program.
So because I'd had some experience with those things before, it wasn't just a normal thing.
We started off the six months, like day two of doing it with a psilocybin journey.
And it was the most transformative of anything that I've ever done.
And it was like a hero's dose, like seven grams.
Oh, yeah.
Like all stuff.
And like an hour into that, I was like seated in a chair and I had to revisit lots of things and I had to breathe my way through a lot of things because there's like subconsciously, there's things.
What was the most amazing to me is the intelligence that exists, that the psilocybin has finding our trauma because it found it, bro.
It found it and like subconsciously working through pulling that stuff out.
Like there's moments where it sucks and you got to breathe through it and you got to take and stay in gratitude.
Like if you're in a mental space where you're ready to accept whatever it shows you, like good, bad, or ugly, whatever it is, and just and stay in gratitude, even for like the painful parts of it, then you can stay in gratitude.
If you're mentally in a place to do it, I think it's the most transformative thing that I've ever done.
I had, after that journey, it was like five hours long.
And I came out of that with more gratitude than I could hold in my face, dude, like tears rolling out of my face.
And I had visited like my children being born again.
And I had seen, but I had that bowling ball that I carried around in my chest and in my gut after that five hours, that whole like 40-pound ball of shit was gone.
Really?
It was gone.
And it hasn't been there since then.
Man, I got to do something.
It was the most transformative.
Out of everything that I've done, I've done Cambo as well.
The tab you?
You've done toads.
Well, and that's like 20, not smoking it, but like they burn you with the vine that comes from the area.
And then you mix your saliva with the venom and put it on.
And it makes, as soon as they put that on, bro, your hands feel like they're vibrating like the fastest you ever felt anything in your life.
Like the minute it touches, it's like.
And then that's only lasts like 20 minutes.
So you can like breathe through the uncomfortable part of that.
But that's like a spiritual and, you know, physical detox as well.
Yeah, boy.
And then I, and then I went to Peru and I did an ayahuasca journey in Peru for 10 days, a dieta.
God, 10 days.
So every second day, you would take the medicine and you're out in the jungle and being out there with you.
And I took one of my boys, Jake, one of my best friends.
You met him the other day.
He was on the plane.
Yeah.
Jake Dodar.
I did meet him.
I got to set him up with Chelsea, with Chelsea Lynn about doing some cool stuff.
Dude, Jake's one of the funniest, the most amazing dudes that I know.
He's just one of my favorite people.
But he went with me, but you're isolated.
So they put you in these tambos.
So you're by this river, like big muddy river.
And dude, you're in the jungle.
Yeah, it doesn't sound like there's like a Hampton.
It's not a Hampton in there.
No, you take a big boat up to a thing.
Your cargoes on a ferry across the river over to a thing.
And then you get in a boat like a Panga, a long one where you're all lined up, like 13 of you in a row with like your bag.
And you go down and then you get to this creek and you turn in off the big river and you go way up there.
And then there's like this hut with a kitchen set up in it or whatever.
And that's where the plants grow.
That's where they come from.
And how many people are out there on that trip?
There were 16 people.
And is it kind of a pretty social group or is it a lot of people that are like, I need some help?
I'm out here.
No, they were pretty social.
And we were the only people that had never done it before because I didn't know this, but to do the diazza, which is like the five thing or whatever.
They were like, well, how many times have you, you know, done it?
And I was like, I've never done it.
They're like, you chose this to come as your first thing.
But I was open, man.
I was in a place where I was just like, anything that's going to help me heal, help me be better.
Like, let's face it, bro.
Let's jump in and living in this thing.
So you basically have a little hut.
It's about as big as this part of this roof right here.
And then there's a hammock and then there's a bed with a little mosquito net and a little desk, like a one chair and a desk.
Oh my God.
Who's the desk for anybody or it's just a, Okay.
So, and about every like 300 yards down the river, there's another one.
And so you have your own place.
And so for 48 hours, you're just sitting in this thing chilling.
I mean, you can get out and walk around the jungle or.
Can you go talk to a neighbor?
You stay by yourself?
You don't talk to anyone until you gather every other day for the ceremonies at night.
So you're basically, and these people, I'll be like walking by.
There's dudes in like full linen shirts and pants or whatever, meditating for like eight hours a day, just sitting there, just like breathing it up or whatever.
And I'm like, thank God I brought a guitar because there's no phones.
You can't use toothpaste.
You can't use deodorant.
You can't put any chemicals on your body.
You can't eat any salt or sugar.
You eat just what they give you.
They give you a tea to drink.
And you drink this tea.
It kind of makes you sleepy, which was great because I would just nap the day away.
And then I napped the first day like super hard.
And the second day I was like, probably the most well-rested I've been in a long time.
So then I couldn't really nap anymore.
And then I was like trying to like figure out what the deal is because I brought like some Lara bars, some stuff to like snack on.
You know what I mean?
And I was like, there's no way I'm going to be starving.
But the lady told me on the way there, because you take like a three-hour cab ride, like in a bus to get there.
I bring some pistachios, I bet.
But you can't eat.
You can't eat anything except what they give you.
So she was like, do not break the contract.
Like you're entering a contract.
That's why they call it the diet because you only consume the things that are from there.
And like, so they give you a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast.
Nothing but just water and oats with like a bowl of potatoes stuck in it.
And that's your breakfast.
And they bring your tea and then.
And what's in the potato?
Anything or just empty?
No, no, no.
No salt, no sugar.
You're drinking this tea they make you.
They bring you like a little thing of tea.
It's really red.
I would drink all of that.
Foods right here to avoid before ayahuasca.
And usually before ayahuasca, it's called the dieta.
Please abstain from the following foods and activities.
Two weeks, it says pork, sexual activities.
That's not a food.
They snuck it in there.
Alcohol, marijuana, all street drugs, spicy foods, and ice cream.
That's ice.
Or ice, too.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
So you're basically going and just like getting rid of everything extra in your body.
Refined sugars.
Sorry, is that just a red meat, junk food of any kind, salt and pepper, so you can't even listen to push it, that song.
Oils, animal fats, carbonated and fermented drinks, dairy products, fermented foods, caffeine and other stimulants.
Oh my God, dude, what the hell?
You can have like breast milk.
You can have water, basically.
Yeah.
So you're out there and you brought your guitar.
Now, is your guitar bothering the neighbors with me?
You get into the money.
You're not close enough to hear anyone.
You're far enough away and you're basically isolated.
Yeah.
I had a journal.
Thank God.
Isn't it crazy how a journal becomes your friend?
I remember when I was on ayahuasca, I reminded myself how much I even used to like to write.
It's like, oh, I forgot I used to love to write.
You just don't do it that much anymore, you know?
And it's like, man, I just really loved it.
So you were out there for that long.
Yeah, so here's what happened.
So the first couple ceremonies were like positive ones.
The third ceremony, it was the hard one, like the death of ego one where you're just like, you know, and I didn't know you're supposed to interact with this being or this thing that you're experiencing when you're in there.
The people didn't tell me this until after that night because I was like, it just beat my ass the whole thing.
But something weird that happened, my dad like appeared in one of my visions I was having and I went to put my hand on his shoulder and he vanished and I had this like weird feeling like something was wrong.
So we get through the ceremony that night.
It was it was a tough one.
I spend the night.
I get up first thing in the morning and I'm thinking something's wrong with my dad.
So I hike out in the river, which is muddy and I've been getting a bucket.
They give you leaves that smell a little bit like garlic in a bucket.
So you take the bucket and get some water.
No, but you use them as like soap.
Okay.
You scrunch them up and then you smell like body odor and garlic at the same time.
I remember one night I was doing this ceremony and I had a tank top on.
Bad idea.
And I remember putting my arms over my head and just smelling that garlic and shit and my body odor too because you didn't wear a deodorant at all.
Forget about it.
I've been at the gym.
And it's awful.
Awful.
But in that, you know, that river.
So I went out in that river and I brought my sat phone with me, which I always have whenever I'm out in the woods or wild or whatever in case she gets stranded somewhere.
So I'll go out in the river and I call my daughter and she picked up and she said, the first thing she said to me was, did you hear about Papa?
And my dad had just been put in the hospital.
But what's weird is the medicine told me that that night.
So I ended up having to like call my pilots and get them to relocate.
So I didn't make it for the last two ceremonies, but I made it like seven days into the journey.
But it was good that I made it to my dad because he needed to eat some good stuff and needed to like get back.
They had botched a catheter going in, so he had like blood clots that kept him from going to the bathroom and like little mountain hospitals, bro, you know, where they put like you know, hog maws on stuff when they get hurt.
Oh, in Georgia?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
It can get really rural.
A lot of people just rub some cracklings on that.
Yeah, people think whispering behind your back just will cure you of something, you know?
Like, yeah, people think gossip helps cancer or whatever.
Because you'll see people out there with signs gossip for cancer, and you're like, that ain't going to save nobody in this small town.
That's a dang lie, dude.
Bro, but the power of that kind of stuff of being under that medicine and the things you hear and learn and the moments you have, it shows you a connection in the universe that's almost unbelievable.
I mean, just that the universe knows what's going on too much.
Dude, even to go back to cicadas, so cicadas, right?
They get born.
The parents meet.
The sound you hear is the males, right?
The whatever the like, like, you know, is a males, and they're trying to get SEX.
I won't say it.
But, and then they get with the ladies.
Then they, the eggs, the lady has them and puts them in a tree, makes a little slit in trees, puts them in there.
Then after a certain number of weeks, they fall out of the tree into the ground.
They turn into nymphs or something, I think it's called, or lymphs?
Can you find that for me?
Oh, turn into nymphs.
They fall to the ground and go into the soil, and they stay in the soil for 13 or 17 years.
And then after that amount of years, when spring comes and it hits 64 degrees, they bloom and come.
So that's why their buddies that eat a lot of dirt when they're little, bro, they could be eating as cicadas and they're just making a village in there somewhere where you don't even know what's going on.
Oh, definitely.
I mean, I think you definitely want to get their, you know, I would probably get their BMs tested, you know, to be honest.
I would test their bowels.
But just unbelievable.
But just to think the things that, like, that's what I learned from ayahuasca was, wow, there's some connection going on that is beyond.
I think it's because we're so void of it.
Same thing as the 72 degrees thing.
Like, we're made to be interacting with the earth.
We're made to be digging up stuff out of the dirt and pulling things out of the ground and getting scratched up and being out in the wild.
And because we're so void of that, we lose our connection to nature and those things.
Like, I resonate a lot with like Native American theology around, you know, like the nature being what they called God or whatever.
Like I, that's where I find church for me is out in the wild because seeing the sunrises and sunsets and a hard rain or a storm or in the ocean, like those things for me, and we're so void of nature, everything around, I mean, it's like we have things that look like nature, but it's really not.
But we're not interacting with the earth and we're not having to adapt to the environment and figure out things.
And because of that void, then we're left without that connection, right?
We don't have a connection.
But I believe the Native Americans had that connection because that's where they were living and that's where they got their food.
I have some friends that are native that do sweat lodges.
This guy, Tom Blue Wolf's incredible.
If you've ever done a sweat lodge, dude, you should go to Georgia, do a sweat lodge with him.
It's unbelievable.
You've done it before?
Unbelievable.
I've done it several times.
Uh-uh.
Yes.
He is amazing.
But the way he sees the world and talks about it and whatever, he's like, if you're living a good life, then the food shows up.
You know, deer will show up.
Things will happen where life provides for you if you're living a good life.
Wow.
That's him.
But that's his sweat lodge right there.
So that's in Talking Rock, Georgia.
That's not far from where I grew up.
But it's not like there's no hallucinogenics or anything like that.
But you're just going in this hut and sitting on the floor and they're bringing in these rocks that they heat up.
They only heat them, use them one time.
And they bring them in.
Like they have a huge fire out front and a guy's tending the fire.
They have a fire keeper and these huge river rocks, they heat them up.
And these things are like glowing orange, right?
And before you go in, you sit and you make your intentions and they give you little pouches, little things of tobacco and little pieces of fabric.
And you put your intentions in there because the natives believe that tobacco is where your memories are hold.
Like the great spirit remembers whatever was put into tobacco.
So like if someone dies, they take tobacco and they float it out into the river in remembrance of that person or whatever.
But that was the plant for them that they smoked as a ceremonial thing for memories.
So you put your intentions in there.
Put your intentions in and you take your intentions into the thing with you and you sit there.
You're like on a cold, sandy, you know, ground.
And they bring them, they call the rocks grandfathers.
So they take a shovel and they lift this thing out and it's dark in there and they bring it in and set it in.
And he takes Palo Santo and like sprinkles it on there and it looks like a constellation like almost inside there and the smell of it.
And then he has sweetgrass.
He brushes it with that and smells it.
And so you say, welcome, grandfather, when they bring the stone in.
It's like your ancestors basically coming in.
And so they get a pile of grandfathers and then he closes the thing and he's got a drum and he starts chanting and then he'll take water and pour it on there.
It's just like being in a sauna.
Yeah.
So you're in there and it gets it gets hot.
I love those.
And then he opens it again and then he brings in more grandfathers.
So by the end, by like round four or five, bro, there's a lot of grandfathers in there, dude.
And it's like, it's so hot that some people have to like lay down close to the ground to keep.
But if you sit there through the ceremony, as it gets hotter and hotter and hotter, you'll start seeing things.
You'll start seeing visions and seeing shapes and seeing things like that.
And you purge, you're just sweating, man, sweating everything out.
But he's leading you.
You know, that was this thing I would say about plant medicine.
Like if you have somebody that's intentionally guiding you, taking you on the journey, and they know what they're doing, you're going to have an amazing experience.
Yeah.
So it's not just, you know, let's go see fish and eat a sack full of mushrooms.
Like there's nothing, I mean, nothing wrong with that.
People do it.
No, but it's a different intention, right?
100%.
I've had two experiences.
I've had one where a guy was a good shaman and let us.
I've had another one where a guy played like Ed Sheeran for three hours, you know, and it was like still fun, little different, you know.
I've had one where they made like a real altar in the middle with all these different deities and candles and everything.
I've been to one where they just lit one candle in the middle of this dark room.
And at first you're like, that's never going to light this room.
But by like the second day, you're like, it's like all the lights you need.
Like you slowly adapt to how much light you have.
And you're just like, oh, that's everything we have is right there.
But yeah, so definitely the ambiance.
And if you have a shaman like leading you, it can be.
And the sound.
The life coach is like managing the sound and playing music and playing different like drums or things that help to do that.
So if there's intention behind it and you're doing it for healing, but I would say out of the things that I have done, the guided psilocybin journey for me was unbelievable, dude.
I can't explain how much that helped me to let go of things, but they have an intelligence.
They're going to go in and find ayahuasca felt a little more like chaotic almost.
Like I'm trying to figure out what it's trying to, and it showed me some things that were very, like, it showed me that at one point I was like hugging myself and I was like, and I didn't realize that I'm separate from my mind, right?
My mind and my spirit is a separate thing than my body, right?
Our body is our own company, but I never thought about it that way because I'm like, I'm by myself.
But then I never really relied on just being alone is okay because you have yourself.
You have your body.
You can actually, you know, like I hugged myself and I was like, it felt like I was holding another person.
And I was like, wait a minute, I am my own person.
Like, I know that sounds weird.
No, but I know what you're talking about.
It's like realizing that you have yourself.
Yes.
Because you're so, I'm so cerebral, always thinking about stuff.
I don't think like my body's something different than that.
It's just kind of waiting on me to tell it what to do, you know?
No, it's powerful, man.
That's a really, I'm really glad you said that.
It's just such an important thing to, yeah, to realize.
Yeah, because sometimes I'm thinking like, I got to do this.
I got to do that.
I need somebody else.
I need some help.
I forget that I am, I can be there for myself.
I have myself.
Yes.
You know, and to have a really strong moment like that is pretty powerful.
But that's interesting that it's a little more chaotic, that mushrooms would be a better, that, that a, that a celebrity showed me everything hard, every weird betrayal, every beautiful thing, every, it started with the hard things, and you just got to be, if you're ready, like if you're open and you're ready, I think it can be the most transformative thing that you've ever done because we sock away shit all the time.
We just stuff stuff under the rug, man.
You know, the kid that stole the baby Ruth from me, you know, or pushed you off your bike, you know what I mean?
You don't even think about that until you get put back on, you know.
I don't know.
It's that to me was the most transformative of everything that I did.
So if somebody was going to do it, for whatever it matters, for what I think, I think that's the one to start with and have someone that's really great and make sure they know where they're getting it from and what's happening and having a guide to do it.
Because since I've been better for myself and for my family and for everyone since I did it.
And so I don't care what other people really think about the idea of doing it as much as I do a result.
If somebody's doing something and you get a good result from it and it helps, I'm in.
I'm in.
Yeah.
Amen to that, man.
What's your fitness regimen like?
You got a good regimen?
Because now you see guys, it's like do 40 like walrus tusks or whatever.
Do seven like salami bridges or whatever.
Do two X wives.
I saw somebody just wrote that.
Some guy wrote that on the board.
It's like, that's just personal information there, dude.
You're just writing stuff in there, you know?
Do 50, you know, it was like do 50 like ball, you know, bareback ball warriors or whatever.
It's like, they're always afraid.
Like, what are we fucking doing?
Man, I. Like, is anybody in shape?
Is everybody, am I a Harlem Globetrotter now?
Like, what are we now?
My trainer that I've got now is all about taking care of your joint mobility, stretching, making all the little muscles strong so that you have your stability, so you don't get hurt doing other things.
So I'd say 80% of my workouts is stretching, foam rolling, posture balls, lacrosse balls, TRX bands, like stretching with them, not even like working out on them.
Really?
And he started with that for me.
I'm only like close to four months in with him.
And his wife is a gold medal Olympic swimmer and she's a nutritionist.
So she tells me what to eat.
He tells me what to do.
And he sends me a sushi menu.
But he was with the NFL for 18 years.
And I'm actually working on a project.
I'm going to do, I did a cookbook a long time ago that was just about soul food because I love to cook and stuff like that.
But I'm working with them on creating a new book that's basically on just how to be well, how to feel good, how to be able to move good, how to do those things.
So his name is Luke Richardson, and he was NFL strength coach for 18 years, like was with the Broncos when they went to, you know, won a Super Bowl with Peyton Manning.
He was the one in charge of their strength and flexibility and all the things through these times.
But he's gotten to work with the best Luke is his name?
Luke, the best physical therapist in the NFL for 20 years.
He's worked with him, so he knows what to do.
But it's like when you finally, it's just like the same thing with my life coach.
Like she took me on the guided psilocybin journey, transformational.
Same thing with him.
He's taken me on what he learned through all of that to help me to get my body feeling good and where, you know, I'm looking the way that I want to look and I'm getting myself healthy in my range of motion because gravity will whip our ass as we get old.
Yeah, I feel like it's not.
People's diets, man, people make themselves sick with diets.
I mean, type 2 diabetes is self-inflicted.
It's like, it's everywhere.
God, I know it's not.
And it's not here.
I feel bad for people that don't understand.
So we're just trying to make like a cliff notes version for people of just like, here's a step toward like getting started.
And here's like, you can try to make it as simple as we can.
But then if you go on our app, like then you'll be able to figure out like, here's the rabbit hole of what it is and why and all these things.
Right.
If you really want that deeper dive with information.
Yeah.
So you guys can have a cookbook and an app?
That's the goal.
Oh, that's it.
Yeah, we just started working on it, but working with them, like the last three months, dude, the first month I lost 30 pounds.
30 pounds.
And then my joints feel good.
My back feels good.
You seem so, yeah, you seem super present.
And a lot of that comes from diet too, man.
I mean, even if you didn't do all the stuff I'm doing with Luke to work out, just getting your diet under, like the amount of inflammation you carry, just eating box food and fast food and junk and stuff.
Yeah.
But it's not that hard.
You just have to follow it.
And you got to be willing to just like do the work, man.
Just like, don't eat the shit you're not supposed to eat and do it.
And then I carry like a snack bag.
I got a bag here of shit that I can't eat if in case I can't get something that I'm supposed to eat, you know?
So, but it's all a beginning.
Like, where do you begin?
Like, if you want to feel better, where do you begin to start with?
So that's what I want to do in the first like book app thing is like, it's a good call.
Yeah.
Where do you begin?
Especially as we age and we're trying to figure out, you know, looking at that second half of our lives and feel, you know, how do we want to feel?
How do we want to approach it?
You know, what do we still want to be able to do?
Because if we prepare ourselves now, we don't know what the future will allow for us if we show up with the best scenario, the best of ourselves to the future.
We don't know if it meets you halfway.
Then who knows?
You know, the possibilities there, you know, are squared practically.
So if you're in pain and you're hungover and you're whatever it is, man, the way you see life is different.
I mean, you know, after being sober, it's like the way that you see the world and you see yourself and all that changes, man.
It just changes.
And I, well, I have to look at myself.
Yeah.
I have to live with yourself.
You can't get away from yourself.
You got to be there, you know?
I know, dude.
God, I wish I could just put myself on a dang shelf for a half hour.
I would fucking just have a party if I could.
You said you're going to play the sphere, man.
I got to go to that, dude.
Man, still, one of my favorite shows was you were doing a, I think it was a private event, I guess.
It was at Jimmy John's summer camp.
Jack Pine.
At Jack Pine Summer Camp, at Jack Pond Lodge over there.
And man, that was, and just seeing your whole band show up.
Clay, no, who's Clay.
Clay, yeah.
Just you guys' whole band and the energy, man.
It was like, dude, it was, it was exceptional.
It was a fun time.
That's what I felt like I had.
And I felt kind of bad because the night before I'd heard that like Vince Neal and Kid Rock had gotten in a fight or something.
Oh, yeah, Kid Rock night shoe at Travis Tritt.
Oh, okay.
I don't remember what happened, but I was like, damn, I hate I missed that shit.
Which, hold on, I will say, was awesome.
All right.
But not as good as you guys's ensemble performance, dude.
Yeah, I think, yeah, Kid Rock was a little more kid than rock, I think.
And he fucking just couldn't handle it.
And he tossed that.
Yeah, he just hummed a loafer at him.
You know, and I see people do it all the time.
you just can't handle anything and you just take a loaf They got that hard leather sole on them.
Oh, it was a damn sparry, I think.
Yeah, those penny loafers, though, it's like it got an edge on them on the leather thing.
This thing was a sparry.
It was a sparry, I think.
It could have been a lance.
Sebago?
Yeah, it was something.
It was pretty nice, I thought.
I remember when a kid, like, I wouldn't have.
When I learned how to tie the little like honeycomb thing on the end of my, like, on my Sebago, bro.
Did you ever wear those?
No, pull them up, please.
Sebagos, brother.
So you learn how to tie the knot, and it looks like a little honeycomb.
So you didn't have to tie your laces.
You just had these two, like, little honeycombs on either side.
But I remember feeling very accomplished as a kid when I could tie that knot.
I could probably still do it if I had to.
I believe you could do it.
Yeah.
Oh, wait.
I think I do know what you were talking about, dude.
Oh, first of all, let me pull up the green, blue, brown one down there.
If somebody had that on, dude, they were rich.
Looks like my buddy's, yeah, my buddy's beach house.
Yeah.
Like back in 1984 or some shit.
That dude was rich, bro.
If he had them.
Look at the salmon ones, bro.
Salmon and gray.
What is that?
Yeah, that dude ain't.
Yeah, he ain't eating at our house, dude.
That guy's, we're eating at his house, bro.
Dude, remember when you got a rich friend, you went over to their house, dude?
And their mom was like home or whatever and fucking making something?
Yeah, it wasn't ramen noodles.
What the fuck is going on here?
We got to get some help in our area.
The Sphere, man, that's crazy.
Have you been to a show at the Sphere yet?
Yes, I've been to, just saw Fish there, just saw U2 on opening night, saw the movie there, been going.
Oh, that's right.
Whenever I talked to you, you had just taken your children to see.
Yeah.
Yeah, you guys had seen it was a nature film or something?
Yeah, it's the movie that they made for the sphere to kind of show off what it is and what it does.
They traveled the whole world with that 16k camera set up and filmed all over the world.
Amazing though, but that's the greatest canvas that's ever been created and it's so far.
And it's and to get to be one of the first bands that goes in there to do it.
So this is our masterpiece, man.
This is our chance to really show what we can do as a band and to get to.
Look at that, dude.
Zach, that's crazy, bro.
You guys going to be in there?
What if God comes back and picks it up and takes it home, dude?
Then you win.
That's great.
I'll fly away, bro.
Well, look, dude, we'll miss you.
And congrats.
Those are the things I would say to you.
That fish show was unbelievable in there.
It was cool.
And what they did conceptually is cool because they played four-hour shows, four of them, and they didn't play the same song twice or they didn't use the same content twice.
No way, any of that kind of stuff.
None of that was the same, but it's different.
So they use it kind of as a big backdrop for what they were doing and for their shows.
And their fans loved it and did it.
I got some glimpses of what was fully possible with the building when U2 was there because they play the same show pretty much every night because you pay to create all this content and make it this like thing where they put you into something.
But I've got a team put together for this thing, man.
And it's going to be the best, the biggest spectacle we've ever done.
And I'm very excited because this puts us in another league.
And the goal is for our band to just keep going, man, to be like the Rolling Stones or like the Grateful Dead or Jimmy Buffett.
Yeah, Jimmy Buffett, like being that legacy acts thing.
So this is really our first thing that I'm putting like a year plus of working and making one show.
Wow.
It's only be one show?
No.
It'll be that show whenever people come.
Yeah, because if you go see it, then did it change your perspective on what you can even do with the background and everything?
That's why I'll see every show.
Everyone that's playing there between now and us, I will be there to see it and see what they're doing, what's working, what's, you know, could be better maybe from my perspective.
And, you know, it's, but there's never been a venue created like that.
When you're watching the sunrise in there and they have a wind generator, you feel the wind on your face and you're watching the sun come up.
I mean, you feel like you're outside and you feel like you're in a, you can't tell it's not real.
And that's the first thing that's been created on that scale that's like that.
Oh my God.
We have to do that in like homeless shelters or whatever or like make it like.
The nice, yeah, make a whole refrigerator box, bro, like 400 feet tall.
You're in the biggest frigidaire box that's ever been made, dude.
Yeah.
And like fresh half sandwiches.
Oh.
God, just smell that chicken Caesar salad.
Yeah, I bet some secondhand Caesar would be pretty, you know, I wonder how much soft lettuce they have to eat to stay on, bro.
And to stay street regular, as they call it.
Oh.
You know what I'm saying?
I heard if you're homeless, if it rains and it makes you have to go to the, like, do number two or whatever.
I don't know why that is, but I think it's you just, your body just really becomes like street legal or whatever.
But I don't know.
I wonder if you marinate in your own solution long enough if that like somehow makes you more durable.
Oh, now that's a great idea, I think.
And that is something we got to explore as a community.
Okay.
Yeah.
We're not.
Yeah.
Well, look, I'll be honest, I urinate on my feet in the shower sometimes because I think it helps them out.
Somebody told me that once.
Yeah, it's like a little ammonia splash, like a little Windex in your toes.
Yeah, yeah, dude.
It's like if that guy came over to my car on the corner of a street and was like, hey, let me piss on your feet.
I might be like, all right, dude, whatever this guy's got in him has probably been through a lot going to help me out.
You know, that clear coat.
Yeah, yeah.
So my homie Neil, so Neil Kamamura is a good friend of mine.
He's a knife maker on Big Island.
But he didn't make this.
In Hawaii.
No, no, that's made in our shop.
Okay.
But he's a handmaker.
I've learned a lot about forging from him.
He's one of my favorite knife makers on the planet, dude.
Just awesome.
Neil, what?
What's his name was Kamakama?
Namura.
Neil Kamamura.
Yeah, he's half Japanese, half Hawaiian and local, but he's incredible.
But before he started making knives, he owned a pumping business, like pumping out grease traps, pumping out, you know, shit like that.
So I think his immune system, dude, I'm pretty sure he could eat a turd and be okay because his business was crawling in these grease traps, like old food and stuff, pumping them out or whatever.
Like whatever you subject yourself to, I figure like our physiology like somehow adapts to it and figures out how to like deal with it.
Oh, yeah, this guy definitely and there's a lot of delicacies over in that area of the world anyway.
Dude, he's wow.
He's one of my favorite knife makers.
And he's taught me how to forge something.
So now when I get done forging a knife, it looks like a knife coming off the ambulance.
I don't have to just grind it into the shape of a knife.
But that's one of my boys, man.
Dude, that's cool.
I would like to meet Mike.
He's a knife maker.
He makes the best.
Yeah, there's like a three-year waiting list to get his knives.
Really?
Yeah.
Wow.
Neil.
Kamamura.
Unbelievable chef, too, man.
Him and Flora.
That's Flora right there.
That's his baby mama.
And she's a Brazilian chef.
She's made some of the best stuff I've ever eaten in my life, too.
Amazing.
Amazing people.
But yeah.
So you got this here.
Do you guys know when this sphere will be?
Is it part of a new tour or anything?
Or how does that work?
So 2025, that's what we're doing for touring.
So 2025 will be the sphere.
2025.
Oh, a residency.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
Let's go.
Congratulations, man.
Yeah.
So I'm so excited.
And I just wanted to, I want to make something that people would not, if people don't know me and know like full, like creatively what I'm capable of, but I've never had a place where I can fully utilize all that and pull favors from all of our incredible people that we know and everything and just like pull something together to make something where it's like, you go and see this thing and you leave there and you go, what just happened?
So that's, that's, that's my baby.
That's my dream.
And it's, it's happening.
So now it's like, you just, we just got to grind all the details, like every single thing, getting it right, going to film a 40-piece orchestra, bringing them in, recording all the parts with them, getting that made, you know, and composed by the right person to help to make sure that's amazing.
Film all of that, film the choir, film the things, you know, be able to make it like Vegas too, where, you know, you can have some acrobats and dancers and things like that at moments.
But the concept and, you know, part of what makes something great, like in movie or film or score or something like that is when something really creates a lot of tension, when something makes you kind of feel like uncomfortable, like it's like, oh, and then when that releases and it goes into like something that's really beautiful.
So the juxtaposition of everything.
So that's the goal.
It's not just going to be like this American celebration thing or whatever.
It's going to be making people uncomfortable and then releasing that and having the series of this roller coaster.
So really a journey.
So yeah, I mean, yeah, because some people, it would seem like you just put a dang eagle flying around for, you know, for two and a half hours if you wanted to.
Right.
If you wanted to and a cobbler, you know, an eagle making a cobbler.
Yeah.
But Peach Cobbler.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And thank God for it, too.
I had it in Alabama for the first time.
Couldn't believe it existed.
Right.
Called my mom from a payphone, called her a, I won't say it, B-I-T-C-H for not telling me it existed.
Right.
I love Peach Cobbler.
That's how much I love it.
I just, I hate that they kept it from me for so long.
But, cause, yeah, because you could just do it, because you could just do it like that if you wanted to, you know?
But yeah, I love the fact that you, you're a really creative guy, dude.
It's inspiring.
Sometimes I forget, I get caught in business sometimes and forget about the creativity.
Yeah, I'm blessed, man.
I'm blessed.
I'm just like a student of the world, man.
I learned stuff by talking with you.
Last time we hung out and got to sit and talk about it.
And you're telling me about things that you're doing and what you're doing.
Like, I think it's the key is like just staying curious, man, and learning from anyone that you can.
Like, whatever, never feeling like you know everything because it's not about that.
It's about learning from each other, learning from each other's mistakes.
You know what I mean?
Like, I don't want to do meth for 10 days straight and stay up for a couple months like you did that time.
I don't want to do that.
I want to, you know, I want to sleep, bro.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, I want you to get a good night's rest, buddy.
You have your family.
You have your music.
You have your creativity coming through.
You have knife making.
I know you guys have a wine company.
And what about what else keeps you busy?
Like, what is there a part?
What else is something that you're really passionate about?
Well, one of the things, you know, I wouldn't say I'm a religious person.
I started off that way and everything, but I'm definitely a spiritual person.
And I think I was given my music for a greater purpose other than myself.
I think I was given my music as a gift to be able to pull people together to do things.
And so the greatest thing that I've done or been a part of helping to come together is Camp Southern Ground, the place that we built.
And it's kind of like a university.
Pull up a picture of it.
Thank you for telling him to do that, too.
I always have to be the one to tell the guy.
So when you tell people it's a camp, it's not what you'd expect, right?
So if you, if you go to 4.8 on Google Reviews.
If you go to images.
That's great.
I've never even seen it.
So first of all, what I feel like I, as the founder of this place, what I feel like I could do is to build a place and build the structures and everything where it's going to be there for like hundreds of years.
So like the buildings are wrapped in a zinc envelope so that they don't naturally degrade.
They're going to be there.
That's the lodge, the third picture there.
And so I spent four years working with a firm to create and design everything.
And then now we're about 50% of the way through building the place.
And it's really just a really super sturdy, amazing place to host things and do things.
So one of the things we do, we have nine weeks of summer camp.
And it's an integration camp.
So kids that are on the spectrum are in with.
Yeah, just like the one I went to.
So borrowing from that.
And so nine weeks of that.
And then we do 34 weeks of veteran programs through the year.
We just started our veteran family camps, which is six weeks of putting a veteran with their family as a unit and helping them to see each other as a unit.
So when they get fractured, sacrificing everything that they've learned how to do and like been specialized in one thing, and then they're just like, oh, I don't need you anymore.
And then they got to go back to a normal, you know, sitting in a chair somewhere and, you know, and whatever it's like, figuring out how to help them transition back home from that and having programs that help them to help with PTSD, to help with things.
We run the Warrior Path program, which is Bernie Marcus's thing, one of the founders of Home Depot.
So we were like the first or second campus that was chosen to do this.
But my.
But you've built all these buildings and stuff here.
Yeah.
So it's more like a university, like can't style campus.
But what we do there is we help people to learn how to treat each other, how to love each other, things that matter, help them to dream, help them to believe that they have potential to do things, help them to see the diversity that's around.
So they take that out into the world.
We help our veterans come back and help them to find purpose.
We have a warrior song program where a lot of them don't want to talk to civilians about their story, but they'll write a song about it.
So we put amazing songwriters in with the veterans and they learn how to tell their story through a song.
And then that's something they're willing to share.
It kind of helps them to open up and do things.
So 34 weeks of veteran programs, nine weeks of children's programs.
We host things there.
Like Mercedes rents out our treehouse.
That thing that looks like a space crab right there, that's the treehouse.
And it's open in the middle.
It's got a table, a circle table that comes down out of the ceiling.
Oh, my God.
And it comes down.
And so we put executives.
That's where we do all of our vision development.
So like for the summer camp, we bring in all the nutritionists, the best nutritionists around that we can find in the nation or around the world.
We bring like eight of the best nutritionists in.
We sit around this round table.
We talk and dream about what we need to feed the kids while they're there so it makes them feel good, but it's accessible so they'll eat it and things like that.
And we got a 16 acre organic farm.
We grow the food there.
The kids learn how to pull stuff up out of the ground, how to plant things.
I love that kind of stuff.
Radishes, I remember.
We would do them.
That's awesome, Zach.
Dude, congratulations, man.
But it's not really, there's nothing about this place.
It's about me.
This is what I feel like I owe this.
And this is like a God thing for me where I felt like I was given the music to help to create something bigger than myself.
But it's, I was kind of here following orders, man.
Like you follow orders.
And if you, if you make your life about something bigger than you, it's not just about all the shit you can have and being on a fucking mountain somewhere with all your shit.
Like, then that's really where real meaningful, like a meaningful life comes from is helping other people and doing it.
So we have an incredible campus at Camp Southern Ground to do that.
Wow.
And do you go there each year?
Yeah, I spent a week.
I lived there as a counselor this last summer.
So I was sleeping in the bunks and there just like I used to do.
And being there and had kids that, you know, it's a little rough for some of the kids that are on the spectrum the first day, like trying to get through to them and help them feel comfortable and doing that, and I have just the leadership we have there and the people we have coming in.
It's amazing.
But we can help other people use their program there too.
Like, if you wanted to do a retreat there and bring people and have people come down, do team building, leadership, we feed you good, we put you up and take care of you, and our staff helps you to have whatever experience you want to have there.
Wow.
So it's kind of like it's where people can rent out the like the play or organize or their own function there.
Exactly.
And we help to do that and pull it off with, you know, without a hitch, taking care of you.
That is cool.
Yeah, I love the idea of thinking about something that's greater than yourself.
You know, sometimes I get stuck too much in the minutia of my own life.
And I know it's important because it is my own life to me.
Yeah, yeah.
But to get so stuck to it sometimes is, you know, I think it's natural.
I'm not looking down on myself, but to try and have more of this mindset.
I've had more of this mindset at times.
Yeah.
Sometimes it's, I guess it feels a little tougher than others.
I think you mentioned, we were talking earlier about having a way that you thought about contributing.
You mentioned to me like kind of a halfway house or something like that.
Yeah, want to get it, try to get a halfway house going.
And we're working on, we're starting like, there's a group, a men's group that we started that is every week has a meeting right now.
It's just a Zoom meeting, you know.
But just the roots of it, you know, trying to look at that and figure that out.
Well, I think aligning that mission with whatever you're doing, you know, whether it's your shows or whatever it is, like there's something like tangible to like talk about, this is what we're doing.
This is our mission.
This is what, you know, zeroing in on what that is and then aligning that with what you're doing.
And then that naturally, like honestly, stepping off into the dark on stuff like that, like the road rises right up to your feet underneath you when you start doing it.
And I've seen the craziest, like not, I would say miracle, but the craziest things happen that aren't a coincidence when you start aligning yourself with that, with what you feel like you can contribute to and make a difference in.
Then those things start, it starts manifesting, like those things start happening.
And so just talking about it, like you were telling me about it and like taking action on it and aligning it with what you're already doing and then having that purpose, like everything starts to fall and literally stuff falls out of the sky on you.
And you're just like, damn.
Like that's another affirmation that just keep going with it.
Like because we're talking about it right now is one of those affirmations.
It's like, but getting that place, like, and we still got to raise the money for the second half of building it all, you know what I mean?
To like finish the place out.
We have all the basics of what we need, but the biggest building in the whole place is what we're raising for right now.
And so finding people that realize, and we're past the impossible point because it used to be, I was like riding around a field, like, this is where this building is going to be.
Right.
You know what I mean?
So, but now it's there and they can see the quality and they can see the impact of what we're doing.
So trying to find the people that have something to give, that want to contribute in some way of doing it.
Right.
To say, hey, look, I love, I see what you've done halfway here.
Let me help.
You know, because I have the financial means, let me help you contribute towards the other half.
And it's not about me.
I don't care.
It's nothing about that.
That's about me.
It's about the difference that we can make there doing it.
And if some people are looking for something to align themselves with that can make a real impact, like we have one of those things.
And there's other things out there, but finding something that you're passionate about that you want to give back, there's nothing that makes you happier than like, I knew there'd be a day when I could stand out.
It's pretty close to my house where I could stand outside and hear kids like singing and laughing through the woods.
And like to get to hear that now and to feel it or whatever, it's just like it lets me know that I'm on the path of where I should be doing and that my life has purpose.
Like it's not just raising my kids and trying to move people with music, but it's like I'm using that as a tool to make a difference.
Yeah.
Amen, dude.
Gosh, man.
I want to come work at that summer camp, I feel like, sometimes you should.
Do I have to have a jurisdiction or whatever?
Like a.
They're going to make sure you're not on some government lists and things like that.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, I'm cool with that.
I'm thinking, do I, yeah, I got to think about what it's called before I ask about it.
Dude, Zach Brown, I'm just excited to get to spend time with you, man.
I know that we've gotten to talk before and I'm a big fan, dude.
And just thank you for all the wonderful music you continue to make.
And yeah, just nice to have some inspirational thoughts and thinking about things that are bigger than myself, you know?
Yeah, finding that purpose because yeah, sometimes there's just this, you're like, then what am I doing?
It's funny.
I was laying in bed the other night and I was like, what am I doing this for?
And I know that sounds crazy.
Maybe I'm not trying to sound like woe is me or anything.
And maybe sometimes the first time a question comes into your head from God or from like the light of the world, it comes in confusingly, you know?
Yeah.
Instead of maybe in, you know, maybe I'll lay down tonight and be like, well, what am I doing this for?
You know?
But interesting, man.
Grateful to him spend time with you today, dude.
Thank you, brother.
You bring a lot of joy to people, man.
I know so many people that you are just a light for and people just making people laugh and making them feel good.
Just being yourself is we're all huge fans of yours and what you do, man.
I'm stoked to get to talk to you and get to visit and hang out more.
So thank you.
Thank you, Zach Brown.
Dude, I still remember one of my favorite moments, and I might just add this in somewhere, but you and me were in a car with Kid Rock, remember?
And the radio was up.
And he goes, hey, can you guys turn the volume down so we can talk about me?
And you know what?
We were crammed in the car.
It was like a clown car.
There was like eight of us in the back of the suburban.
He's like, hey, can you turn the radio down so we can talk about me?
It was hilarious, dude.
And you had the lashes so perfect, man.
One of a kind.
And so were you.
Zach Brown, thank you so much for my nice gift, man.
And we look forward to coming to see you at the sphere.
Yes, sir.
Thank you.
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