Today's guests are two members of a band that I really enjoy. They're out of Mobile, Alabama. They have a new album coming out in May, and they've been picking up some steam. I'm grateful to spend time today with Brandon Coleman and Andy Bishop from the Red Clay Stray.

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 on the steps.

Yeah, I guess Ben has that mustache. Some people can't grow certain facial hair.

Brandon's native, man. Yeah, I can't really.

I can grow a mustache and a little bit of a goatee, but that's it.

Everything else doesn't work. Really? Why? What happened? You weren't scalped or something. Somebody wasn't.

How native are you? I think Brandon's family-I'm Cherokee, so.

Doing the scalping.

Yeah, we were doing the scalping.

Then you think you'd have a little extra collection.

You would think so. If my grandmother would have passed them down or something. But she never did any of that.

Wow. So was your grandmother, did she seem native? Did she have a vibe like that?

A little bit. It was really my great My great grandmother. I have an old black and white photo of her somewhere. She's just straight up Cherokee Indian. That's straight out of Red Dead redemption, too.

Yeah. Do you feel native sometimes?

I don't think so.

If you get near... I wonder if you hear stuff different than a regular non-native person hears.

I'll speak on it. I think Brandon gets a little frisky when a rainstorm is coming in. Him and his brother, his brother's on the road with us, too, our videographer.

Yeah, I met him one time when I met you guys.

He can actually throat sing pretty good, too.

Yeah, he does it as a joke, and everybody's like, You can't do that. He's like, I'm native. I can do that if I want to.

What? He'll start really We'll get into it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can do it, too. Watch out.

That's powerful, man. Yeah, one time I was up in Minnetonka, Minnesota, and I went to... They had a... What's it called? A big get-together that natives have. How-well?

Every time I've heard the word pow-wou, it just meant backing trucks up to a campfire and drinking whiskey all night.

Yeah, but that sounds pretty native to me, too.

Yeah.cooking meat. Throw a little gambling in there, too. Yeah.

Pow-out is a gathering with dances held by many Native Americans in First Nations communities.

I'd say so.

That's it.

Ben was right.

Yeah, Ben was right. I didn't sleep that great. You guys have that ever?

Oh, dude.

All the time.

I don't think we sleep good until we go home.

Yeah?

I don't sleep well. Going out on the road, it takes a couple of days to get used to sleeping on a bus, and then getting home, it takes a couple of days to get used to sleeping in your own bed again.

Yeah. So that equals about no sleep. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. It's a real... You're always trying to get comfortable.

Yeah.

That's why we carry a lot of Z quill on the bus. Yeah. That's the first couple of nights. Have you pre-vosa? Have you been in the tour busses?

Yeah.

Those things are hard to sleep in for first couple of nights for me.

What part do you sleep in? And what part do you choose to sleep in? Because there's the different levels of the bunks.

Yeah, so we're in a crew bus still, so we travel 12 deep. We got the crew, everybody in one bus, so I'm the back middle.

Yeah, I'm the top bun.

We're looking for that second bus.

Yeah, no, we have one bus when we go, and everybody's in there. They have a crew bus for production, so they're in a separate bus.

Ben's got some pictures. There you go.

There's definitely different values to the different slots, I think.

Yeah, our tour manager and keyboard player, they all prefer the bottom bunk. They say it's the nicest. They said the worst part about the bottom bunk is if you blow a tire out, it scares the crap out of you.

You buy by everybody's feet.

Yeah, that's a good point. I guess there's a lot more dirt down there. There's a little bit of foot traffic if you open the curtain.

People throwing their shoes off, and you got to wake up, move shoes out of the way.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, you have to really want to get up.

So I will tell you, our old bus, what we call it, it's a bus, the one we traveled in before. It's like a red neck Prevost. It was a '99 E450 with six bunks built in the back of it.

You could probably Google it, Ben. The Breeze is what we named it.

And this was homemade, so this is how you guys first, when you guys started hitting the road. Yeah.

And we broke down a lot, picked ourselves up off the side of the road multiple times. Yeah.

We started looking for a van, and the vans were just so expensive at the time. So, yeah, we're sitting on it up there. I don't know if we have a picture of the inside. Probably not.

Not on the internet.

That's an old picture.

And this looks like one of those things where they go to pick up seniors to take them to market and stuff. Is it that?

Like a shuttle bus.

Did it have that door on it?

That's us waving goodbye.

Yeah, that was when we got the new bus. It had the door. It had an electric open. We ended up just getting rid of it. And then our security system was just a ratchet strap, had an eye bolt on it, and we just hooked to it.It was rough.That night time, yeah. But we're practically diesel mechanics. If you ever got a 7.3, you need to work on.

Because there's so many breakdowns, you mean? Yeah. We had one at We had a guy that refused to... He would buzzcut his hair every day, refuse to cut any of his ear hair.

What about his nose hair?

It was all coming out of his ears. Whatever was supposed to be in his nose had really had gone upstream, I guess. You could see it? Oh, yeah. You could see it. I mean, it was like his...

One of those little troll dolls. Yes.

Yeah, like one of those dolls you would get at school, you put on your pencil. On your pencil, yeah.

You got to cut that at night. You got to do it for him.

Oh, I think the moon cuts his hair. The moon cuts his hair. I mean, it was involved in something extraterrestrial, and he had... But that thing broke down a couple times. One time, he just threw a cup of water on it. I was like, That's not it. We got to get another box.

Is he shampooing it?

I'm talking about the engine. The engine broke down one time, and he threw a cup of water on it.

I thought you were talking about his ear hair. Oh, the ear hair? He's got a cup of water on his ear hair. The ear hair, he could- We've thrown our share. Well, we blew a hub, we throw We had to throw water on it.

Yeah.

Mostly just to listen to it, see how hot it was. It's hot.

That's always the best mechanic, dude, when you just crack that thing up here.

It's too hot. Dude, we've had some. There was one, you remember the We blew a heater hose, and it had what's called a quick connect on it. Was it a heater hose?

You're talking about Joe?

No, this was me and you. You remember I spit on it? Oh, yeah. We couldn't get it to go over that little... It's like you just push it on, it clips, and that's it. And we just fought with it for hours.

And I was like, you know what? We missed our show. We had to cancel our show and everything because we could not get this thing to slide up.

It just needed a... And I was like, You know what? Screw. I went in there. We're all sitting in the bus thinking about what to do. I went out there and spit on it and pushed it on there and got it good. And it worked Just needed a little lube, man.

That's it. That's all you need a lot of times. Red Clay Straze, man. Thank you guys for coming in.Thanks for having us.Thanks for having us. Yeah, I'm such a big fan, guys. Why? I don't know. There's something There's something just damn... It feels like a little bit whimsical, historical, romantic about the music.Thank you.There's something that feels like you just hop on the clock hands and just start spinning backwards. It feels like a little bit of a time warp. I don't know. It feels good, man. It feels good to listen to. That's cool. I know you guys started. You guys are from the south. You guys are from Alabama, right?

We all still live there. Born and raised. Mobile.

And how did you guys... Was it a couple of you at first? You guys have five guys now?

We have six now.

Okay.

But yeah, it was originally five. We just hired a keyboard player. Oh, wow. Like last month? Yeah.

And did you audition for that or how'd that go?

We actually met him when we were touring with L King, and he was playing with L at the time. And then we realized Last summer that he wasn't playing with El anymore, and reached out to him.

Immediately. It was one of those. We showed up, we're like, We're sevens. He's like, He's not with us anymore. We turned around, made a phone call. We got him now. He's ours.

You're They let him go. That's crazy. Oh, that's perfect then. So is that needed because you want to add a different element to the music? Or how do you come to make that choice?

I think it's... Yeah, we just wanted to... We've always wanted a keys player to lay down piano and organ tracks. And I could play a little bit, but not near as good as we needed, I guess. So that's always been a thing we wanted to add in our music. And it was supposed to be we were going to get our drummer's little brother to play keys with us, and he passed away in 2020. So that was... Sevens is the right guy to feel that role that was originally intended for him, I think.

Was there a trial night where he comes in and you're like, Okay, this is...

Normally, we would hold an audition, but we already knew how great of a player he was from seeing him play with El and just sitting around in green rooms when there'd be a piano in the green room. We We saw him play and how good he was.

I think we've always been looking for that piano player. And when we saw him with El, like Brandon said, it's one of those, like, Dang, that guy's good. So when we saw that opportunity, we jumped on it as soon as we could. Yeah. He fits in just long with us.

Yeah, when we called, we weren't like, Do you want to audition for us? We were like, Hey, do you want to play with us?

But here we are, we're auditioning. We're auditioning in front of house guys and guitar techs.

And how does the band start to form up? When it started out, How does a band even start? Because I'm used to just hearing some guys get together, write down a song or whatever, and then just get in a fight at somebody's house, and then the band is done.

We do that. We just haven't quit yet.

Plenty of fights have happened. I had actually met Drew when I was still in high school, and then Drew introduced me to Andrew, and we had started a little cover band. Drew The guitar player, he was actually the manager at the time. That band played for a while. We had actually hired John in that band, and he played for a couple of months before it dissolved. Then we hired Zack, our guitar player, and started calling ourselves Recklese Rays. Then Drew, eventually, we learned that he could sing, and he was learning how to play guitar at the time. We started getting Drew to come on stage with us. When he first started getting on stage with us, he kept his amp turned all the way down. He wouldn't even actually play. Yeah, he was just really shy.We're.

All pretty shy.I didn't know there was a way to be shy on there with your name.

Oh, yeah. He was faking it until he made it.

That's one thing that was cool to see is because I lived with him, and he locked himself in his room every day, pretty much, for a year, and just taught himself how to play guitar.

I used to tell him to stop playing, too. I feel bad now. He'd be in there. In the old band, be be ending practice, and he'd have a beer bottle just raking it across the strings, and I just have to tell him, Dude, you got to give me a minute. You got to stop. And now he's like... Drew's one of those... He gets the Most Improvement Award every year for us. He just gets better and better, and it's just... He's good. I wish I had his work ethic when it came to learning an instrument.

So he was on with you guys, and then he got better?

Well, he was the manager in our first First Band. And then when Red Clay Stray started, the five of us started that together. There he is, Handsome Devil there.

He's like, I got to get in here.

Yeah, I think he's got it in his song. Him and Brandon's little brother, Matthew, write our songs, pretty much 50/50, and Brandon writes them, too. So I think it's just natural in him. He just had to find that way, getting it out.

I think what got him on stage was we noticed he was singing harmonies at practice. So we were like, Hey, get on stage and start singing with us. And he didn't want to just be standing on stage empty-handed, so he would turn the guitar down and just hold the guitar pretty much. And then somewhere along the line, decided that he wanted to start actually playing, so he taught himself.

Wow, that's amazing.

Zack, he's just always been incredible. Zack just come right in, just ripping and shredding and blowing everybody away. Now, it's just surprising to see that Drew and Zack, just two completely different styles and how they've learned off of one another over the years.

And so in the past, probably a year, things have started to get busier, right?

Yeah. Yeah. We've been... Especially, I think things really started taking off for us. We were actually off the road last year, last fall in November, and we just see these numbers just on a rocket ship. What the hell is going on? So it's just riding it out.

We hired my little brother, who is the other songwriter, We had already been playing all of his songs, but he would do his own thing. I think he was driving for Uber at the time. And last, we took him on the El King run last year and then officially hired him last April. And he just went right to work, recording us and monitoring our social medias and building a social media presence and then popping off on TikTok, I think, a couple of times, really. Yeah. That with the L tour just jumpstarted it a little bit for us.

Yeah, he does a great job because there's a lot of fun clips on there. You guys have some cool stuff on YouTube and stuff that I hadn't heard that wasn't released yet, just on Spotify and stuff.

That used to be how we tour.

Yeah, we toured off at YouTube.

We just tell people to call venues and tell them to check out YouTube and Facebook. Yeah. Just, hopefully, they'd book us, and a lot of them did.

So that's what we did. And when did you guys start touring pretty heavily? When did it Oh, shoot, we used to play.

I mean, we'd play 200 Cap Rooms. I remember getting excited for 70 people showing up. I mean, we've always been... We just wanted... Our big thing was we wanted to be the hardest working band in America. So we would... I mean, shoot. For the last couple of years, we've played majority of the year out on the road, especially last year. We did over 150 shows driving ourselves. So it's more of like 250 travel days or more. And then that was the same the year before. We're just running around, breaking down, and just excited for 50 people to be in front of us. Gosh. It's crazy to look back at that now. Where we are now, we always looked up to like, Man, I want to play these clubs, these 1,000, 2,000 cat rooms every night. I could get used to that, opening for people. And now we're there, and now we're like, Man, those arenas look fun. How about getting used to doing that?

Yeah, our festival. Do you guys do a lot of festivals, too? Well, that'll probably happen this summer.

Yeah, we do a lot of festivals. Yeah. I don't know if we really like festivals as much. We like doing our own show. We're not pressed for time. Festivals, you got to be on time with starting and ending, and that's just... We like to take our time and relax.

Usually, the set is really short, too. It's like we get 45 minutes, and it's like, I'm just now starting to get warmed up at 45 minutes, and then it's over with. Yeah.

We're not headlining festivals or playing at three o'clock in the afternoon. Oh, yeah.

It's sunburn time.

Oh, yeah. We just did it in Tortuga in Fort Lauderdale.

Oh, yeah. At the heat stroke festival or whatever?

The Heat Stroke Festival. Yeah. We just felt like we just ruined everybody's beach party. That's the worst. We have to play sad songs.

Dude, I remember one night we had to play, I'm thinking of One time, they put us at this Italian cocaine Christmas party, and it was... This was in LA. It was probably about maybe seven years ago. Are you guys going to perform at this Christmas party?

This cocaine Christmas party.

Yeah, well, everybody, we get there early, and everybody's trying to get us to do cocaine, and we're doing it. And then we had to perform, but we thought it would be a stage and a good set up. So I think it had rained or something, and they put this party in a tent, one of those white tents with the fake plastic windows.Oh, yeah.Oh, yeah.

So we had to perform in there right next to the tables. You Some people's backs were like, you were on the curve of the table, and their backs, and they were eating.

You were doing stand-up in there?Oh.

It was so- You just feel like you're just in the way. It was so hard. Especially high on cocaine, I'm sure, too.

It made me so scared and nervous. And someone and the lady kept biting her lip at me. And, oh, that was one of the worst moments that ever happened.

She was probably doing the cocaine, too. That was probably that jaw thing that goes on. Everybody in there was-You probably misread that one.

Everybody was rattling Rattling. Everybody in there definitely had a catalytic converter issue. It was just... But that was a tough gig, man.

We've had those. Those tough gigs make you humble, though.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, we just had a... Go ahead, Brian. I don't think I know what you're going to talk about.

I was going to talk about the Purple Buffalo.

I was going to talk about Dallas, Cowboys. Was that a corporate gig you did?

No, I've done some really bad ones like that.I.

Hate corporate gigs, man.

Corporate shows are terrible.

Some guy made his son come up and give us $10 one night when we were on stage, and we were performing an empty backyard.

Really?

Yeah. And you're doing comedy? Yeah. I've never seen someone tip a comedian on stage. Oh, lie.

This kid ran across a child.

Go give that nice man 10 bucks.

I've had those shows, too, where it's just like you're in someone's backyard and they're not paying attention, but at least there's music, and it's super loud, and you can drown all that out. I can only imagine being in that setting, trying to tell jokes, and like, nobody's paying attention to you. I don't know how you keep it together, man. I'd have an anxiety attack just trying to...

You're like, Yeah, this is what I deserve. That's where it ends with he. This tough part about the kid was he kept running across halfway and then got confused with what to do, and he would go back and ask his dad. So it was just like, Just give me the $10, or I'll come get it, but I can't. It was like I was just horrible.

Did you just take it from him and he started crying?

I was just like, Don't drop out of school, kid. Thanks.

That was a really tough one.

That's putting the grind in, though, man. Oh, yeah.

Oh, dude, I used to drive at 110 miles an hour to get to the next gig, putting everyone's life in danger so that I could perform at like an O'Charlie somewhere or something. It was like everybody.

It was very-We used to have our Mexican restaurant gigs way back in the day doing four-hour cover shows.Oh.

That sounds fun.It's not.

It's fun for a minute for at least the first hour.

There was one right before COVID had happened, and it was There's a place called the Purple Buffalo.

North Charleston.

Yeah, and we played right after this heavy metal.

No, it was a punk rock show.

Yeah, like a punk rock show.

Three punk rock bands before us.

And then you? And then us. We're playing covers at the time, too. Our country Bunk & Butts just get up there and just start playing music. The room just empties out, and we're literally playing to nobody. I just go out in the crowd, and I just sit-Well, where the crowd would be. I'm sitting where the crowd would be, and I'm just sitting at the table singing to the band as they're playing. And then the whole time, the bartender was offering us drinks, and we're broke at the time, too, and we're just thinking, Oh, cool. At least we got a bar tab.

At least we're going to get the drink.

And then after the show, she just brings us the bill.Oh.

Yeah.oh, man. We didn't even get paid to play. It was like...

Didn't make any money.

Yeah. We're looking around the bus for change. Pay our bar tab at this place.

Just drink ourselves.

There's a picture of an actual Purple Buffalo. I prefer that one.

Oh, yeah, that's nice.

Oh, that's what the place looks like with people in it. That's cool. I've met her before.

She parties, dude.

We've definitely had those empty shows where you just play for yourselves. That's when you really got to enjoy what you're doing.

We used to play for tips. Our tip bucket determined how far we were going to get the next day. We'd have no money, and we'd get tip money for gas and maybe even one hotel room for all five of us to pile up And it was just chance every day.

Yeah.

Damn. Stayed in a lot of people's houses or even slept in the car a couple of times before we got our shuttle bus, that is, the breeze. Yeah.

I wouldn't say we're successful. We're not where we are from overnight, I guess.

Yeah, I think that's what I was trying to get at a little bit, just thinking about all this stuff. It's funny. A lot of times I'll forget about a lot of that in a weird way.

You can take it for granted pretty easily.

Yeah, it's weird for me. I I don't even know if I take it from... I just forget. It's like you forget the work that you've put into something.

Yeah. Me and you've been doing this since 2015. So seven years, eight years.

I was in college, too.

Nine It was for me and you. I'm thinking of just Red Clay's Trace.

Red Clay's Trace has been...

And the band before that, what was it called?

Coleman Mason Band.

It was just a local cover band. Band we don't speak of.

Really?

We would run the crowd out.

Yeah. I love that. Hey, look. Then Red Clays Trace brought them back in.

Yeah, we're coming as the bar closer, man. They want to get them out, we got them out.

Oh, I love that, dude. It's like instead of playing Closing Time, it's like, Let's hire this band.

Yeah, they'll get them out. Don't get them out. You want to shut this thing down? We got you.

We mainly ran people away because it was so loud. The guitar ants were so loud. But even with Red Clay Stray, we were playing somewhere at in Arkansas, where the soundman come up on stage and he told us to turn down. And I was like, The only thing running through this system that you're wanting to turn down is my vocals. The drums are still going to be loud, the guitar is still going to be loud. And so I walk over there and I inch it down just a little bit and continue playing. And he just walks on after a song just right in the middle of the set. We're not doing this tonight. And he just walks up and turns everything down by himself. And I was just like, Man, if I didn't need this 500 dollars. I would freaking leave right now. Yeah. It was rough.

We used to talk a mad game. We used to pack up and leave.

That was at a restaurant, too.

Yeah, that was in JJ's in Little Rock, Arkansas. Was that Little Rock? No, that was Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Yeah, that's the tough part. When you're going to compete with people's moment to dine.

Yeah, that's dinner. Yeah, those suck.

When you're going to say, Hey, set that fork down for a second, mama. I got something for you.

We'll give you a pork chop.

Can you Can you turn the music down? Can you tell them to turn it down? That's what playing with people eating is like.

And we used to do our own sound, too, so we used to make it real loud because we grew up listening to like, Skinnyard, and we thought that's how it was supposed to be. Yeah. It was just loud.

We're still pretty loud.

Yeah, we are probably still pretty loud.

The number one thing I think that's tough sometimes, if I go into a small venue or just a bar and somebody's playing is, if you can't hear the vocals a lot of times. Oh, yeah. It sucks because you're like, I might love this.

Yeah, that's why we try to hire a good sound guy. Dude, the sound guy is what? I mean, he's practically a member of the band. He's making you sound good for everybody. And we've been to a lot of big concerts. It's just like, this sounds like Yeah. And this sucks because we know how good that band is.

It doesn't matter how good the music is. If you can't understand or can't hear something, then it's pointless.

Yeah, there's a lot of venues aren't really built for comedy or music where you have to end up playing, too, which is wild. You know, like recently, I went to some places, and the venue just wasn't... It's not the perfect venue, but it's the only one in that area that you can play.

Yeah. We've been to those where you walk in, and the reverb in the rooms is just ridiculous. You just know you're just going to blow these people's heads off. It's just part of it.

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Plus, you get a designated designer. Consider updating your existing website or getting a new one. They made mine, and I'm thankful for them. Visit modiphy, M-O-D-I-P-H-Y. Com/theo. Com/theo. Com. Theo for 50% off, the last website you'll ever need. That's right. Unlimited web design and redesign, unlimited website updates, 24/7 support, digital advertising included, plus you get a Designated Designer. Go to modiphy. Com/thio for 50% off, the last website you'll ever need. When it came to the name of the band, how did you guys figure that out?

Man, that story is not even that cool. You think it would be.

Well, Red Clay is all over Alabama. You get over anywhere over there.

I didn't like the name at first.

I don't think any of us liked any name we came up with.

What were some other options?

Oh, dude. One, the band likes Brandon Lane and the Hurricanes. We on the Gulf Coast, we got Hurricanes. That's his middle name, Lane.

It's perfect. I love that.

I liked it, too.

That'll be the Alter Ego.

The Alter Ego. No, but my brother came up with it just randomly.

Brandon Lane and the Hur hurricanes, Red Clay Straits.

We had the Dirt Leg trio for a little while, and it was just me, Brandon and John. The Dirt Leg trio. We're from South Alabama. We're not making up names.

Yeah, that one, I think, is a little bit... That's like a gangre, and that feels more like an infection staff, the staff boys.

The staff boys.

Something I got from my job, it's like, they wouldn't say, You're red neck. They'd say, You're dirt leg.

Dirt leg, that's worse than red neck.

What is a dirt leg? And they're like, Well, here's a red neck, and then here's a dirt leg. It's trashier, worse of a person, steal from you. They're a dirt leg.

Damn. We would have somebody call you. We call like a dirt serpent. That's Kid Rock, we call him.

I would say, yeah, I'd say Kid Rock falls in that dirt leg category. Yeah. Dirt Leg is a dirt serpent.

I just described a lot of bad stuff.

I know, I'm not joking.

Yeah, he's more of a dirt serpent. He's like a leader of a club.

Yeah, you just had him not... Oh, there's a... Whoa. He brought up the Urban Dictionary.

Dirt Leg, a female looking for a quick fuck who only has enough time to take one pant leg off.

That's where we came from. We got those.

Getting the other pant leg dirty.

All right. Dirt Leg. All right.

Yeah, they just put that TikTok ban into-Yeah, we actually on the way up here, we actually just saw that. Were you guys seeing that?

I've seen it on Instagram.

Yeah, we saw it on the news.

Let me see. Congress had passed the bill this week as part of a wide-ranging foreign aid package meant to support Israel and Ukraine. It was approved by the House on Saturday and by the Senate on Tuesday.

And it also had TikTok hidden in. Is that what it's saying? Yeah. Welcome to our government. I know. They always be doing that. Ain't reading that fine print, people. Now we lost TikTok.

It's going to suck if it actually goes away, though. I know.

Man, there's got to be something behind it.

Even our band has grown so much from TikTok.

I don't even be ticking the talk. I'm not even on it.

It's fun. It's dangerous because you can get into a warped zone where you look up and suddenly your family hasn't eaten. I could see that easily. Somebody scroll on TikTok, and then they look up and their children haven't eaten.

That's what they need to scroll, the death scroll. Death scroll. Instagram or TikTok.

See, I get on my reels from Instagram, and my fiance gets mad because I'm six months behind.

Oh, yeah. You all are behind over there.

I do the YouTube shorts, too. That's my death scroll. Oh, yeah. So I'm getting eight months, nine months behind.

Yeah. You're in hospice.

The reason I like TikTok is... You can ask him, all of my Instagram stuff is just messed up people.

We get dark. Our Instagram reels get dark.

People getting in motorcycle wrecks and just a lot of crazy stuff that I'm like, How is this on Instagram?

We done screwed our algorithms up.

But then TikTok is like, Well, here's how you make a garden in your backyard, or here's how you...

For now, until you get on the dark side of TikTok.

I haven't been on the dark side of TikTok.

Damn, I don't want to get over there.

Don't start searching things.

What are some things? Look under some of my links. I have a couple of favorites that I've had on there recently. Oh, here we go right here. Now, this is something I saw. This is called the Oriental Short hair.

These are tubular, long and tubular with rock-hard bodies, tight, close-lying coats. And then they have this super-refined-That thing ate a ruler, homie, that thing. Really, really fine now. That's a different ethnicity of a cat.

Got your measuring stick, huh? That thing. Like a Toyota cat. That thing's out of town.

That was a wiener dog at first.

Yeah, it is. That's a damn wiener cat.

Wiener cat, dude. You don't want to see our recent searches.

Really? It's getting pretty bad. It gets pretty bad. Well, those are just some of them. That's one of my faves. I'll go do a couple more.

With the cat videos? Well, yeah, we might as well enjoy TikTok while we got it because we're not going to have it much longer.

And that's Asian guy walking with turtle, and that's always a beautiful... That's really...

You have a very wholesome algorithm.

It's like the notebook in Japan, dude. That video right there. It's their notebook. What else do we have?

Now, look at that.

This guy's a little nativity scene on the go. This is like DoorDash nativity scene. Play it one more time.

Is that all it is?

Yeah, it's like 40 bucks that he pulls up.

It's like those things at the fair. Does he have an actual little baby he could start using, too, for Christmas?

If his wife, maybe. If he's probably got to ask his wife.

It reminds me of those boots at the fair, you pay like 20 bucks to go see the snake lady. Oh, yeah. You walk in, it's just like a- We just had a carnival worker on, and his grandfather was the great Lentini, and he had three legs and two penises.

Okay. I thought that was his third one.

Well endowed.

No, that's what people thought at first. Like, damn, one of these things needs a shoe on it.

Oh, this is real.

Yeah, this is a real guy, Frank Lentini, right there. Wow.

He's got his own Wikipedia. Wait, you said his dad?

The carnival worker that we had in named Mitch, he had a granddaddy.

Okay, because that guy was born in 1889.

Yeah, this guy.

Where is he from?

Damn, Narnia, probably.

That's the stuff you see in the Marvel movies, though, man.

Dude, I bet that dude could run a foot race, play soccer.

I bet he could climb up walls and stuff.

Oh, I bet that dude.

That's a modern day Spider-Man.

That's what I was going to say. I bet he lived in a web.

That would be, yeah.

I got to have one nude picture of this man.I wonder what his...You have to.

What his attitude was. You think he had a temper when getting bar fights and just start kicking people?

That's a great call, huh? It would be crazy if you're standing there talking to him and then one of his foot just puts a cigarette in his mouth.

You know, this is what the UFC is missing right here. It really is.

What if you think the weirdos, the people from nick, who have feet things, they've seen this guy.

Oh, on Foot Finder, this guy would have been...

Yeah. A spokesman.

Oh, he It could be in the Naomi Campbell of Foot Finder.

Three legs, four feet, 16 toes.

Come see them, boy. I'd appreciate it.

That math ain't adding. That math ain't mathing, isn't it?

It was a different time, different math.

Now, didn't they ban all that?

15, he had one extra.

Didn't they ban, like you can't show yourself off in carnivals and stuff.

Like freak shows? Did they ban them?

Let's look that up. I thought they did. It was considered inhumane.

Well, what if you sign yourself up?

It didn't matter. They banned it anyway.

Freak shows remained popular until the 1940s when public opinion began to shift. Throughout the 20th century, several federal laws made discrimination against people with physical disabilities illegal, and the exhibition of extraordinary bodies was outlawed in some states.

Wow. Now, that seems a little prejudiced.

What I read was the freaks in the freak shows got mad because they were like, This is how we make a living. Yeah, of course. People pay to look at me, but I don't know how true that was.

Well, it's like the Redskins now having to probably change their name back because the natives got mad at them for changing it.

Oh, they did now? They got mad at them for changing it?

That's what I've read, yeah.

They're trying to change it back now?

Yeah. Supposedly. My friend Cliff Kingsbury is coaching up there. It's his first year up there. He's an offensive coordinator.

I graduated college with the safety, Jeremy Reeves. Oh, wow. I did sports medicine in college, so I did some of his rehabilitation.

Damn, and is he healthy now?

Yeah. Well, he just came off an injury, but he's good. Damn. Good enough to be playing with the commanders.

Which who knows if that's that good? We'll see. We'll see. Remains to be seen.

He's getting paid.

Yeah, which state's outlawed? Which States outlawed those shows. That's interesting. I wonder if it was like, who would do it? I wonder what states would do it, Southern states?

Well, I wonder if they looked at it as like, you're just-It's hard to imagine the political demographic back then in the '40s. I wonder if it's like you're bringing... You can't really call them special. It's like handicapped people and making a show of them. But what if they sign up and they want to make the show themselves?

Well, they have the same thing type of now where they have a A lot of people with what some people call disabilities have shows on TikTok or social media channels. Tlc? Yeah, TLC. Their whole network is based off of people with four necks or whatever, or double.

Do you ever watch My Strange Addiction? That was when I watched when I was younger. It'd be like lady drinking gasoline. Oh, yeah. One lady liked to eat toilet paper. Oh, yeah. She ate the foam out the mattress. Yes. She was a big one, too. Went straight to her hips. It sure did.

Damn, really?

Mm-hmm.

Damn, boy.

Like, Squidward with them crabby-patties. You got to watch out.

Pimperpedic, baby. I like them thickies, baby.

I think she ate the springs, too. You'd have to look that one up, Laine.

Well, we spoke with a man the other day who ate glass.

Was it on the street? Or was it on the podcast?

I can't remember. But yeah, he's had a lot of it. I don't like anything like that.

I I would think so. Yeah.

With the demise of the carnival, an important slice of American history risk being lost. But the residents of Gibson, Florida, are trying to keep the legacy of the town's famous freaks alive.

I think a town of freaks.

Yeah.

It is Florida.

Gibbtown was a utopia. Its first settler, the giant and his wife, the Halfwoman, ran a campsite, a bake shop in the fire Department. Wow.

There's a whole town of the Freak Show.

In the golden days of American Carnival, all roads led to Gibson, Florida. The self-defying 14,900-inhabitant town, 12 miles south of Tampa, became the industry capital, Carny town.

They must have been next to one of those power plants.

It makes me wonder, though, if it became illegal to stare at freaks in a freak show, but it's okay to go watch mentally handicapped people in the Olympics and stuff. Why is one except on Bull and one's not.

It's a good question. Yeah.

Is it just because one's doing sports and the other's just sitting on a couch?

Shoot juggling. I've seen some stuff. You'd probably see him juggling.

Yeah, you would think, that's a sport. Dude, I think it's like it doesn't even... People with handicaps are more... If you watch this show with dating under the influence of down syndrome or whatever, what is it called? Down for Love. I've heard of it. You're close. Dating on...

I've never watched it, but I've heard of it.

It's amazing, right? It's just like it's people that have disabilities. Some of them are down syndrome, and they go on first dates, and they start to learn relationships, and they are just as awkward as anybody that doesn't have the disabilities. In fact, sometimes they are better at dating than people that have disabilities because they're a little bit more frank about what's going on.

A little more open, a little more bold about it.

Yeah, it's fascinating. That show is fascinating. I was just watching Baby Reindier. Have you seen that?

We don't watch cable.

I don't really have a lot of time to watch TV.

But damn, I'm living in damn luxury then.

We ain't got cable.

I try to watch stuff on the bus, but I usually just end up falling asleep.

Yeah, that's impossible.

What's Baby Reindier?

Baby Reindier. It's this guy, Richard Gad is his name, and he writes this. It's amazing. It's eight episodes or six episodes. It's about he had a stalker, and it goes from there.It's British.That's.

The setup. Is a Reindier involved?

I said he looks like a Reindier.

There's a baby Reindier.

It looks like a stranger.

Interesting. That sounds cool.

You guys have one full album out, right? Yeah. And now you're putting together another album.

It's put together.Oh.

It's done?It's done.

Okay. It's ready to come out.It's.

Going to be coming out. Here in the very near future.

Wow. Hopefully by the end of summertime.

How does that feel? Because that's really...

I can't wait for people to hear it because it's just a lot better of an album than the first album as far as production goes, because we recorded it with Dave Cobb.

Oh, yeah. Chris Stapleton.

Yeah.

He's on all our heroes.

It was always a goal of ours to work with Dave since we very When he first started. Yeah, there he is.

And now, how does that come to pass that you guys get to match up with him? Does he reach out to you? Do you start to interview a series of producers?

No, we actually, at the time, we were looking up studios. So we wanted to go to a studio where the Alabama Shakes recorded their first album. I think it was called the Bomb Shelter. Here in Nashville. In Nashville. And that was the plan until Brandon Mouldon, who works with Conway Entertainment, which is where our manager works, made the connection. He reached out to Dave for us, and he was like, Hey, we represent this band if you're interested in working with them. And Dave knew who we were. And so he was like, Yeah, I'd love to work with them. And then he set up a Zoom call with us and reached out, and we talked to him that day. We were actually on the way to a show. We had to pull over on the side of the road and talk with him.

So the van wouldn't make us a noise. He could talk.

It was so loud in there.

We were like, We stopped for some barbecue, too. So I'm eating a barbecue sandwich talking But there was no service.

They were walking around trying to keep service during this because it's like we're talking to one of our heroes in the middle of Alabama in the middle of nowhere.

You're like, These guys, they can't even produce a call. They're not going to make anything.

We were probably somewhere in Alabama, too.

Wow, that had to be a pretty magical moment.

Yeah, that was.

We didn't know how to feel about it. It was crazy.

We don't really like the first record that's out. I cannot stand to go back and listen to it at all. Really? It was such a cluster making that thing.

I like it for what it is.

Yeah, for what it is.

We'd just gotten out of another record deal that wasn't working for us, and the only way to continue forward was to get out of it. So we finally made it out of that thing and then just on our own, not knowing what to do. And we go to this guy's studio in Huntsville.

Sink every dollar we had.

Go in the debt making it, and that's eventually... We were still unhappy with it, trying to make it, but eventually we just had to call it quits and say it's done.

Was that because of money? They just had to call it... Yeah.

It's just money and time. Yeah, we didn't put all this work in this window of time. We opened up for it. So this next one, though, we listen to it every day, I think. It's incredible.

Yeah, I haven't gotten tired of it yet.

Yeah, we're ready to put that one out. It should be pretty good. Or the people hate it. We don't know.

I can't even imagine because when you all's music come on, man, it just feels good. Can Can we listen? Can you take me through who comes in on wondering why in the beginning, just in the beginning, so I know who the different... Because you guys have different band members. I want to make sure that I get the gist. Can you play it for us by chance?

Can you just play it through the... You can play it through the speaker. We can walk through.

Through the tele. Yeah.

What song you want to listen to? Wondering Why. Yeah, this is right here. I just want to know who comes in when, right? Because it starts off just with you singing.

Yeah. You probably won't hear it, but I'm right at the second verse or the first But I just play bass. It's not that big of a deal.

But you come in. Boom. Yeah, that's it.

Well, I go to the core, you'll hear it.

This is Matthew recording this. That's me doing the... On that guitar.

So that's you on the guitar? Mm-hmm.

I come from blue collar, old dollars. The old boat paddle.

And here comes my big moment. Right here.

And I don't know what happened, but it should don't add up on paper. One earlier cut used to have finger snaps right here. Yeah. Oh, I like that.

But who was hitting that symbol right there? That's John. Okay, that's John.

And that's Drew.

There's Drew. And then it's Everybody? Yeah. That's awesome.

And then that's Zack in there, laying in those backup parts.

Or just ride, like fretting that.

Does he play a slide on that?

No. Okay.

Is that called fret?

He does this right here.

When you're courting or making courting.

That was Zack.

Got it. Yeah, I was just listening the other day, and I was wondering, I was like, who's coming in when? Just so I know who's doing what. Yeah, what's the collaborating like for an album? Do you guys seem to... Does it get tough? How is it battling egos and stuff? I guess at this point, if you spend that much time in a In that close a quarters, you guys have got it figured out?

Oh, we're brothers, man.

We used to... We would work up songs. In the earlier days, we would get aggravated if we didn't want to take the song in our direction or my direction or Zack's direction or whatever. But somewhere along the line, I think we just got to a point where we realized at the end of the day, we all want the same thing is to make good music. And so we try everything. And there's always a way to make everybody happy as far as making music like that. And we'll try everything, even if we have to play the song for eight or nine hours while we're working it up, just play it over and over again, all these different ways until we find the right way. And there's not really any egos involved with that.

Damn. I don't think a lot of bands are like that. At least I wouldn't think so. So we feel very fortunate.

Yeah, I know when I met you guys, we were in Virginia, Charlottesville, maybe?

You were playing-That's where you brought us out to your show, out there. Yeah, you were... Where the heck were we? I don't know.

I can't remember. Shoot.

I feel like it was Charlottesville. I think it was Charlottesville. It was Charlottesville.

But we came at the end and saw a couple of you got to see a couple of the songs.

You were that goopy Jeff Gordon Jack in.

Yeah. I didn't believe you were going to show up. Yeah. Theo was probably going to come out, and I was like, Theo's going to be way too busy to be worried about us.

Dude, I had so much fun. Yeah, look, there we are. But you all band, there was an energy in there. You guys, we all sat in there and just chatted for a little while. But a lot of groups, it's not like that. You'll meet a group of a band sometimes, and it's not the same energy.

Dude, we make each other laugh day in and day out. You put the five of us with each other, we're going to just... We can't help but just crack up laughing.

Yeah, because our theme song on the podcast was made by a group called Bishop Gun. Did you guys ever hear them?

Yeah, they're from South... They're not together anymore, but they were from South Mississippi.

Yeah, and they really had a great start. They got to open up for the stone.

That's us watching you.

Oh, gang, dude. That's awesome.

They had us the other side of the stage. Oh, wow. We were there for five minutes, and we were like, we're like watching the clock. We had to leave right at a certain time to get back to start our own show. We didn't want to leave, man.

No, it got bad.

Did it? It was fine. We loved that a good time. It's funny because we don't really listen to much music as a group. When we come on the bus after a show, it's comedy. Oh, yeah? Yeah, it's Kill Tony's or somebody's stand-up special.

Kill Tony's so great, man.

We actually saw a couple... I guess it was a couple of weeks ago. We went and saw Shane Gillis invite us out. He put us up in the suite and everything, and then we got to meet freaking Tony and Jeff Ross.

Tony was just standing outside smoking a cigarette, and we walked up on him.

That dude's as goofy as you think he is.

That's what he was like, Oh, hey, guys.

Had his big old Texas belt buckling like, You ain't from here.

Well, well, well. That's when he was one of a kind, bro. His show, they have like 100,000 people watching it at once when it comes on. That's unprecedented in the world, I feel like.

I can't remember how we even discovered it, but we watch it all the time on the bus. It's just about every night after a show. It's so great. It's incredible.

It is, man.

I think we're going to a Kill Tony in a couple, I think next month.

Yeah, are you guys going to head down to Austin?

Yeah, we're going to... I think Tony invited us out to do a Kill It's funny with him. Really?

I'll be there.

Yeah, come hang out. Well, then we're going to hang out with you. It's going to be a party then. I think it's at Rogan's place, I'm not mistaken. I don't know where to shoot it.

I'm going to go down there for a couple of weeks and work on some material.

You're going to be on the panel that night, you think?

I don't know. They asked if we wanted to go on stage, and I was like, no. Hell no. No, I I don't want to go watch. I don't want to get on stage.

You ain't going to hurt my feelings today.

Those poor guys.

I've been doing comedy for 13 years, and they just get wasted to hell. It's like, damn.

Yeah, the balls that that takes because it's so hard to make people laugh in a minute. It would almost be like, Hey, guys, in one minute, make me believe that you are a good band.

Yeah, you can't do that.

It'd be really hard. You could do a couple of riffs or whatever, but I feel like it'd be really tough.

That in comedy is just something I don't understand how to make. I like sitting there watching it and wondering where a joke is going to go, and then the punchline comes in and just makes you roll while you're laughing. I can't do that. I wouldn't want to go on Kill Tony just for that reason. I'd be up there just, Oh, play in a band.

I told Brandon, if he ever goes on, you just got to go up there and sing for a minute. That's what you got to do, bro.

You just lean hard into Yeah, lean into what you do best, brother.

If they invite you to bring potatoes, bring potatoes, dude.

It's just that being a comedian seems... Man, it's like we have music to hide behind, and we have the five of us or six of us up there to hide behind. We have each other, especially watching you and Shane, it's like, you're up there by yourself, man. You're out in the abyss.

That's what's fascinating about it.

You're floating around hoping people laugh or get what they paid for.

We couldn't do it with... I think the hardest thing I think to do is that improv where people are working with other people. That's the thing to me that seems like it's really the toughest. I've tried to take improv classes and stuff, and I was not good at it in Los Angeles.

You weren't good at improv.

It was so hard, man. Because It's just you're so used... As a comedian, you're so used to just... Yeah, I was just so used to controlling things myself. You know that I would just... I don't know. It was hard to do it with somebody else, I guess, to trust that somebody else, it was going to work well.

It's that-Probably chemistry, too, though. Yeah, there's a surreal moment for even us. It's hard to believe that people are coming to see you do what you do.Oh, it's crazy.It doesn't feel right.

One time, I was stuck in traffic. We were coming back from the YMCA from working out for a show, and I was like, Man, what the fuck, dude? This fucking town. And it was traffic from my- Coming to you. Yeah. And the driver goes, Dude, these people are going to see you.

Oh, no. I was like, Oh, You're complaining about the traffic.

See, that's when we- These people are awesome. That's one of our goals when you've made is when you can shut down the damn freeway outside of the arena. That's when you made it.

That's how we felt pulling up to your show with all that traffic.

Dude, it was like, are we even going to have time to get in? We're sitting in traffic. We get out and just start walking. The Uber is just like, We just get out here. We just started walking down the sidewalk.

Literally the red clay strays, dude. You guys are just wandered around. Yeah.

I think we're in a cool spot right now to where it's like, we definitely get noticed a lot and all, but it's still hit or miss in some places. Especially if I wear a hat.

It's like an imposter syndrome for us, too. It doesn't make sense to us why people like what we don't feel. I mean, we feel what we do is half-ass mediocre. It's just like you could go spend your time and money on a lot better things.

Well, people-So we just- But even talking to me about the number of shows you guys did last year, the only person I've heard talk that's done that many shows was Laine Wilson last year, did a lot of shows.

She was cool, yeah.

She did a lot of shows. She was... I saw her at the end of the year, and I was like, Man, she is gone. It just hasn't ended.

You have to. I think that's where the boys and the men are separated. It's not about being the best. It's about literally just going and doing it. If you can stick through it.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Resilience, for sure. And then I think even with Bishop Gunn, they had some addiction issues in the bank. That stuff tore them. Oh, yeah.

I mean, we've seen that, not with ourselves, but it's so easy being on the road. I mean, you probably see it with comedy, how you can easily turn to those things. Oh, yeah. It's a dark hole. You don't want to go down. It's not the '70s anymore.

Yeah, it's not the '70s anymore. I'm looking for. The whole sex, drugs, and rock and roll thing is a... What's the word I'm looking for?

Like a thing in the past?

It's like a stereotype. Everybody from the outside looking in, they think that's what it's like, and it's not really like that anymore. We've always made it clear Everybody has their struggles and whatever you're going to do, but don't let it get in the way of this. You know what I mean? If you're struggling with alcohol, not to say that any of us do, but just in the sense of if you are struggling with something, stay sober for an hour and a half a night to play the show. These people pay money, and they take their time out of their day or their schedule to come see you, and you're going to get on stage too messed up to perform. That's not cool with me or not cool with any of us. So it's always been a strict rule with us, I think.

Like we're talking earlier, us five are so close to each other. We're like brothers. When somebody slips, the pack corrects. Really? Oh, yeah. We've all gotten our ass chewed after a show or two.

That's pretty fortunate then that you guys are able to have that symbiosis or whatever within your group.

We want the best for each other, and we all love each other very much.

We all recognize that we're doing something bigger than ourselves, which If you're worrying about yourself and what you want to do or how you've been done wrong, then you're going to find all kinds of excuses to get mad or to quit or to argue or fight with somebody. But if you keep it selfless instead of selfish, that's where you can find fulfillment and the strength to keep going, I guess. Yeah.

And I think a part of that was our come up meeting some of our heroes and realizing these guys are not cool. And that's how we don't want to ever treat other people or treat our own crew, let alone each other.

Yeah, just seeing that stuff on different festivals or different things like that.

Yeah, you run into some. We've met some people that you think would be douchebags, and they're cool as hell. Yeah. And that's always cool. It's like meeting you. You could have been an asshole to us.

Yeah.

You were, but that's okay. We're here.

I had to be, I guess. What did I do? Something bad? No, I'm just messing.

You wear that Jeff Gordon jacket. That wasProblem One.

That'll turn some people off, man.

I made you take it off.

I got to pee really fast, guys. You got to do it.

You got to be anybody else? I got to pee.

You remember the first song you ever heard?

I remember the first song. Sorry, I'm a little out of breath going up those stairs. The first song I remember singing was a song by Tracy Bird called We're From The Country And We Like It That Way. Everybody knows everybody.

Everybody Calls Your Friend. Yeah, that was a good song, huh?

Don't need an invitation. Kick off your shoes and come on in.

Yeah.

Know how to work and we know how to play. We're from the country and we like it that way.

How old were you when you sing?

I had to be probably four or five years old.

Were you singing to the family? Were you performing for someone, or were you just sitting somewhere to sing in that?

My mama told me, even before I When I talk, I'd walk around just going, Nee, nah, nee, nah.

Already on the vocal warmups.

Okay, so.

But I've always been a songbird, I guess. I remember having the little radio off of Toy Story, the microphone. Oh, yeah. I was just dragging the radio around, and it took a cassette tape, and so I'd have the Tracy Bird cassette tape in there and just...

Oh, dude. Gosh, I just brought back some memories.

Yeah. Yeah, the one I had. That looks like sketch who was just on here. Oh, my God.

Maybe that's what you base it off of. What's up, brother? That's unbelievable.

Yeah, what's up?

You got to send them one.

Oh, yeah, we've got to send them one. Will you write that down, Ben? Okay. Yeah, what was that sound you made again? It reminds me of Squid Games.

I did not like that show. You didn't? No, it I'm freaking out a little bit. I'm a grown man.

Yeah, it's a little bit freaky. A lot of... Yeah. Look, I got some Japanese friends, and they're prone to violence at times.

Really? I could see that.

Oh, they liked it. Yeah, they're really... Because they keep a lot of their feelings in. And so the only...

Well, that's the way of the Ninja, though, right? Yeah.

Yeah, I guess so. They just busted a dude with a Samurai sword out there, Grillin' meat. Where was that at?

Sounds like Florida. Samurai sword and Grillin' meat.

Yeah, this man, Man, Grillin' in shopping cart, used sword as a skewer, arrested near Santa Monica.

Well, he didn't try to stab nobody.

That's what I'm saying. This guy is, Video from the Citizen app captured the wild scene before 3:00 PM on Sunday. The man is seen dragging a shopping cart through a bike lane.

That looks like California.

The main compartment of the car is filled with flaming wood while the man uses a sword as a skewer to hold meat over the flames. Here's the thing. If you have so many people who are without homes, right? They're going to start to open up barbacoas or whatever this is called. They're going to start to open up hair cutting. I get my hair cut when I'm in LA by a guy who is a street man.

A street man.

But he makes a living cutting hair. He makes a living cutting hair. This dude dreamer. He's Native American, actually.

That right there, that's a food truck. Well, a food cart, but same concept.

It's the same concept. And yeah, sure, maybe it's FDA approved, maybe it's not. People is still society. They're still going to start a civilize. You know what I'm saying? Everybody's going to start a civilization.

If they don't have money to pay permits for food trucks or whatever else, they're just going to-That machete is that man's permit. Yeah, they're going to resort to whatever they can.

They're going to figure out. I think we got to put more swords on the streets.

I bet that's some of the best barbecue you probably ever had, too.

Samurai sword?

Yeah, Samurai. Yeah, Willy Samurai barbecue.

What do you think that meat is? He probably did not buy that at the grocery store.

Damn, dude, I think that's damn probably-He's got some of them Calleigh raccoons.

I don't know what they got out there.

Oh, I think that's probably brazed human, bro. Oh, shit. Who knows?

You don't know when you're getting it out of a shopping cart? No.

Dude, it's look, obvious. And here's the thing, this shopping cart will make you think that it is-Grocery store quality.

Yeah.

So really, the guy's got a great concept.

Really, it's a grocery store manager quality.

Where does some of you guys' influence come with What are you guys listening to right now?

What am I listening to right now? I've been listening to Lake Street Dive a lot lately. We just saw them at Moon Crush. Really?

They're incredible. Lake Street Dive, you never heard of them? Uh-uh. Oh, they're incredible.

Put me on.

Always been a huge fan of them, and seeing them live just reignited that. So I've just been on a Lake Street dive kick for the last few days. Our listeners-Her vocals are just insane.

I love that organ player, man, When he sings. I mean, they're like... It's like the '70s, modern day '70s music right there. It is incredible, especially live. Yeah. Really, really good.

Lake Street dive.

I got obsessed with trying to do vibrato because I can't do it. I couldn't do it at all, but now I can do it. But she was one of the ones that I would listen to, trying to figure that out, how to do that with your voice. Still can't do it that well, but I'm trying my best.

So a singer will learn different tricks from other singers, or not tricks, or just manipulations or ways to perform?

I just learned by listening. If I listen to Lake Street Dive, or listen to Wayland, or whatever I'm listening to long enough, I'll start to mimic that on stage a little bit. So how I sing at whatever show I'm at depends on what I've been listening to for the past few days, I guess.

Yeah, I think there's something about that, being an entertainer. Part of you wants to... Especially if you're staying open to things, you're going to be a sponge in a way. You may... If you've been absorbing one thing, then the next time you perform, there could be some of that in just in your energy. You want to be a conduit for good energy. And a lot of creativity in music, art is good energy, usually.

Do you see that in comedy at all? Yep, I see it a lot. If you watch too many or too much of one guy, you start taking that personality on?

Oh, I'll watch some Chris Rock, and I'll go out there and be like,.

This guy loves to bring up Chris Rock.

So, yeah, that'll happen. Oh, every comedian, when they started out, at my time, everybody started just like Mitch Hedberg. All the people that were booking clubs, all the bookers were like, Yeah, everybody right now sounds like Mitch Hedberg. It's just because he's so popular right now. I think there's a lot of that that happens.

That's the guy who yells, right?

He would be like... No, that was...

Who am I thinking of?

Oh, you're thinking of...

He died a long time ago.

Yeah, you're thinking of Sam. I like this game. No, it's fun. Sam. Don't ruin it. Keneson.

Yeah, Kenison.

That's it. Sam Kenison.

That guy was hilarious, too.

Well, he had a crazy story with this guy, Carl Le Bove. Can you bring this up? So Carl Le Bove, R-I-P to him, too. He passed away. Really funny, sweet guy. I never knew Sam or met him, but one of them had a daughter. Can you bring it up? Let me see. The late comedian Sam Kenison left his friend and fellow comedian quite a belated surprise. Carl Le Bove says that Sam was the real father of the daughter he thought was his.

Oh, no.

We heard about it on the Joy Bahar show where LeBeauve said he found out that Sam was the father after Sam died. So yeah, Carl had raised her her whole life and then found out that Sam was the father. I was devastated.

This was with his wife?

Yeah. So I think there was a rumor that the child was conceived while he was on stage one time. Wow.

That is some disrespect.

Yeah. I mean, there's craft services, and then there's craft services. I was devastated. Carl said, We're talking about at the same time of 14-year friendship, we started out together. So we had survived living the streets. You know what it's like to start on comedy? I mean, we stole fruit from the bars at night just to eat and slept in my car, and we survived for a very long time. And then with the Rodney Dangerfield special, it changed our lives. And of course, Sam became huge, and I was the head writer and his best friend. We never lived more than a mile apart.Wow..

Then he slept with his wife.Yeah.

And he was sleeping with his wife.

That's crazy. Yeah, what does it say happen?

You can say best friend and do that. I know. That's what's wild.

So I called my ex to explain to her that I was having a tough time, and that's when she told me that Sam had fathered my child. Wow. Yeah.

That's crazy.

Carl above had not been able to legally establish that Sam Kenison was the child's father in court because all the blood tests proved that she was related to the Kenison family. Now, with the DNA test, he has definitive proof that Sam was the father.

Wow, that had to be so wild. Yeah, I wonder what his thoughts were. It's like, because his best friend died. And so that's That's normally something you would be mad about him sleeping with your wife, but at the same time, it's like he left you a little part of himself to raise.

I don't know. It's almost a story out of the Bible, almost, it seems like, in a way.

Yeah.

In a way of Or maybe not out of the Bible, but it's like one of those Asup's fables or something, something where you learn a lesson learning story. Because that'd be crazy. You would hate him, you'd be angry at the wife, but then you'd also have something that you cared about for so long.

So he didn't learn that until the death?

He didn't learn it until way after the death.

Yeah, I think the daughter-Wow.

You have to look at that child a little different, too. That's not your blood anymore.

I know. I wonder if that starts to happen inside of you.

But you also had that connection like an adopted child. Right.

And that probably wouldn't disappear, I think.

I've seen mixed emotions from different videos. Some men are like, It doesn't matter. That's my kid. I don't care. And then some men are like, Well, that's not my kid anymore.

I don't know how I'd feel in that situation. Yeah.

One guy I saw was playing Hit the Road Jack on his phone after he found out. Really? So he was pretty excited.

Definitely depends on the man, I guess.

That dude was out of here. What else have I been listening to?

Yeah, that in comedy.

Steven Wilson Jr. I listen to. Eddie Ninefold. I listen to him.

Yeah, we got him opening for us at a show. Yeah, we do have him.

Eddie Ninefold.

Yeah, bro. They're a fivey, man.

Oh, yeah. We got-I'm on the come up. Yeah.

I'm on the come up.

We got a band called The Moss opening for us on the West Coast. I think they're out of Salt Lake. They're cool. The Moss? It's a little more indie rock. Yeah. Not so much. I don't know if you're into that. You're West Coast, aren't you?

Yeah, I would listen to anything. A lot of times I need people to tell me what to listen to.

A good one that they're no longer a band anymore. Yeah, The Moss. Jay Roddy Walston in the business.

Oh, yeah. That's some groovy stuff, too.

That's some good rock and roll music. Yeah. All the albums they put out. Did they put out two or three?

Oh, I couldn't tell you. You introduced them to me.

J. Roddy Walston in the business. Baby, I like that.

That's some cool stuff. I don't know if you ever listen to Alabama Shakes. Yeah, I hate that. They're not a band anymore. That's one that we looked up to.

What happened to them?

Well, I think we read some dark stuff about one of the members in the band, and I think that probably led to the downfall. I don't know how true that was, though. Yeah, we don't know how true, but I think they band like we are that started together. A lot of bands nowadays are built around a star or a singer, and I don't think they were one that started together and ended up breaking up together.

More of a constellation. Yeah. Wow. What happened? In 2018, the band went on hiatus due to Howard's focus on her solo project, Jamie.

Yeah, she's done a bunch of stuff after that.

Which led to a solo tour in 2019. Howard released her second solo in 2024. In June 2020, guitarist Keith Fogg, released his debut solo project under the name Sun.

Yeah, I'm not familiar with any of that, but Alabama Shakes was incredible.

And was that all the members of Alabama Shakes? What's that? Those people right there?

Some of them. That's part of the band.

So some of them, they obviously just, some of them went their own separate ways. Something must have happened, with it.

Or she wanted to do her solo stuff, which is...

That sounds like it. Man, that's the scary part. Well, that's what's interesting about the ego. The ego, you don't know how it's going to grow. It grows like a moss, man.

I could see myself doing solo stuff one day, but I'm not going to quit Red Clay Stray's. You know what I mean?

Yes, hers was more of a quit. Never came back to it.

Like that band, Need to Breathe. You know who I'm talking about?

That's another one to listen to.

Ben knows. Their lead singer, does a project called Wilder Woods, and he goes and does Wilder Woods stuff, and he still does need to breathe stuff. This is just if I ever get extra time on my hands and just want to start other projects, I could see myself doing it, but definitely wouldn't.

Need to I agree. Yeah, they're great. Brandon actually showed me them, too. I would say we have a similar sound to them, I would say.

I grew up listening to them. That's definitely somebody that I started trying to mimic learning how to sing. He got a very powerful, loud voice, and that's how I started singing everything. It was very powerful and very loud. And then getting into, I guess, diving deeper into it, starting to learn technique and how to use your voice and stuff. And then I wanted to learn how to sing opera singers with the vibrato and stuff. So it just depends on who I'm listening to.

And would you sing? So after you were rattling around the house, mimicking and learning some and running your pipes, did you start to sing in church or what was that like? Where'd you sing, Kanye? Yeah, I started singing. How did you start to sing? Where'd you start singing at?

Yeah, that was the first place I ever sing in front of a crowd was at church. I started playing drums in church when I was 12.

That's a dangerous move, usually. Did they put you in that little shed or whatever behind that thing?

No, I hate those things.

I do, too.

Usually, the church always puts that guy back there behind that little aquarium.

It depends on the church you go to. Now, the ones that Brandon was in, they're in there jooking. It's not contemporary.

All the churches are moving that way where they want to shield everything and have all of the actual sounds of the The instrument's coming through the PA system, and it's like, I want to feel the sound waves, man. That's how it used to be. I want to go out, just let the drummer play, let the guitar player play.

I want to get hit by damn drum stick in there. Yeah.

That's how you get into it. Then that's something I actually had to go to... It was Brandon was playing in the church, and John, our drummer, John was playing drums in the church. This was probably four or five years ago, and I grew up in a Catholic church, and you walk in with a tie on and the organs playing and congregations singing. I come in there, and they are in throwing down. At his church? I thought it was a WWE match. Oh, yeah. I had to bring John's snare drum. He asked me to bring his drum, and I'm like, In shorts? I didn't know what I was coming to. It's a wild different environment. But you feel the Holy spirit moving in a bunch of different ways.

So there's a lot of energy in there. Oh, yeah.

That's why I've always like Pentecostal. Pentecostal? Yeah. I'm more non-nominational because I don't really... The Baptist, the Pentecostal, the Catholic, this is all preference-based in my opinion. But I do like a Pentecostal church because I zone out so easily and I lose attention. And if I got somebody up there screaming at me and stomping his feet and getting into it like a performance, pretty much, it keeps my attention. I love that. And my pastor, he was like 72 at the time. He'd be running across the pews, running over the top of them and just feeling it, man. It's just something that keeps your attention the whole time.

Yeah. Do you think that's had an effect on how you perform?

Yeah, I'd say so. The church he's talking about is where I was going as an adult. The church I grew up in was more of a, still a Pentecostal church, but it was more of a smaller building, and a lot of older people were there. Just an old Southern country church, I guess. It wasn't a lot of energy until I started playing drums there.

Brandon brought the Holy spirit back in there.

Did that change the vibe in there a little?

Yeah, it was literally just, at the time, it was literally just the pastor with no amp or anything, just playing his acoustics, singing hymns. And then I started playing drums, and then they had a keyboard player. I guess I started doing that around when I was 12 and played in there all the way up through high school. Before I started going on the road and being gone all the time.

Yeah, man, that church, especially if you got a church that's got a feeling in it. That's why I remember the first time I went to black churches, man, them things were different.

I've been looking for a good black church.

I see a lot of similarity in the church like Brandon is talking about. They're in there getting down, the preachers up there really preaching and throwing energy into it. The music's bumping and jiving. Oh, yeah.

That's what they do.

Yeah. I love that because there's definitely something. I mean, even if you look at Tony Robbins, he jumps on his trampoline before he goes on stage. There's something- Get that adrenaline going. Yeah, to get just his... I think he says it's to get the in his body, basically just to get the... It's like shaking the snow globe, babe. You know what I'm saying? You want some weather, you just want nothing. You got to start your own weather a lot of times.

Hop on that trampoline.

A lot of times the Holy spirit or whatever, that feeling you get, I feel that a lot on stage, and that's what I project a lot of times, singing. Just to see that in a pastor, feeling that passion to make him raise his voice or to make him stomp his foot. Yeah. He's up there in the moment. He's feeling it, and that just keeps you drawn in the whole time.

Yeah, man. I need to find some good churches that have stuff like that. I thought of- That's the south, I think, just in general with churches. I would love to one day maybe end up in a road like that. There's some moments on stage where I feel a little bit like a pastor.

Is that weird to say that? Well, I mean, you're up there with a microphone. I wouldn't say so.

Yeah, I don't feel like in the sense that I'm like some- Like a spiritual leader. Right, no. But I do feel that in a sense like, Oh, I wonder if there's part of me that has this calling a little bit. That's what it is. It's like a little bit of energy goes through me. It's even a moment when it's when I'm talking about God in this one bit, and I'm like, I wonder, why does this bit stand out to me so much?

Or I wonder if-That could be the Holy spirit talking to you.

Yeah, at least whispering.

At least whispering.

I think God gives you a platform, and it's a constant trade-off. God raises you up and gives you a platform, and then you turn around and give it back to God and raise him up, and then he raises you up. And that's just the way I've always looked at it. God gives you talents. He gives you drives to do things. He gives you a... And then gives you a platform and you can either make it about yourself or turn around and give the glory back to God. And it's just that constant trade-off that's always going on.

Wow. I never really... Yeah, that's a great way to say that, man. It Yeah, it's like volleying with tennis. It's like love, love, love, love. Yeah. That's fascinating, man. Do you have a pretty good faith? Is it just that has a pretty strong faith, Brandon? Does a lot of your band members? Or is it a church-going group?

We're definitely not a church-going group, but we're all pretty faith-based.

Yeah, especially the five core of it. We all come from different religious backgrounds with it, too. Like I said, I'm Catholic, Drew's Methodist. Brandon grew Pentecostal. John, I don't know where he came from. Southern Baptist. Southern Baptist, yeah. Wow, yeah. So we actually, I mean, we've had a lot of late- Through the portal then.

Yeah.

It's like none of us are fighting to live like a Baptist or to live like a Catholic. No, no. We all grew up that way.

We have some great conversations, though.

The goal is to do what God put you here to do. That goes back to not making it about yourself. It's something bigger is going on than just yourself. And so I think that's another big reason why we haven't broken up or anything, even when we do disagree or get in fights or whatever. The goal doesn't change. There's still something bigger going on. Yeah.

But to get everybody to believe that, that's hard to do because some people can believe something. Two out of five people sometimes be like, yes, this is how I believe, and this is how I'm going to behave based on that belief that there is something bigger than us going on. But to really We get all five. It's pretty miraculous.

Yeah.

And it's not like... I mean, even our whole road crew were built of, you got Christians, we got atheists. It's just like we have a common goal, and it could be something different for that other guy, but we know it's something bigger than ourselves. Yeah.

I know if somebody doesn't believe, it's not my job to save them. You know what I mean? I'm not out trying to preach to anybody or convert anybody or anything I'm not doing anything like that. I'm simply just singing songs. If you like it, if you like the message and if you like what we do, then listen. I don't care what you believe or anything like that. Yeah.

I'm not the Lord's EMT. That's what I say. You know what I'm saying?

You can do us pray for them, man. There's power in prayer.

Yeah. I'll follow the ambulance, but I ain't the Lord's EMT.

You get right behind and get through traffic. I used to do that when I was younger. I tuck behind that thing.

Yeah.

I used to use the Lord to skirt through traffic. Yeah, he's lead-blocking for me right through rush hour.

Amen, bro.

I used to love to try to look in that back window and see what they're doing in there. Oh, yeah.

They should put on the outside what's going on.

I like how they leave the lights on. You can see them in there working on somebody.

Yeah, it's almost like- It's eerie, though, when you see an ambulance with lights but no sirens.

It's like, Oh, that guy's dead in there.

More than likely.

They just drive to the hospital.

Well, it's almost like, do they say, Is it cheaper not to do the sirens? I wonder at that point, it's like, Oh, this guy's dead. Or just run up the bill. This guy's dead.

Yeah, does that siren cost you a little extra? They got insurance, you go the whole thing, they're going to take you. You ain't got no insurance. You're sitting in traffic. We'll get you there, buddy, but you're going to save about $500.

They should have a second level of an ambulance for people that don't want to pay the high premiums of regular ambulances. Because how much does it cost for an ambulance to come get you? I already had it, dude. With insurance, the average out-of-pocket cost for an ambulance ride is $450. So that's like an Uber black from probably-Across town, at least. Oh, yeah.

You could probably get from Lebanon to here. $450? Black, maybe?

That's true.

I don't know. That's a decent ride.

It's about a-You might be able to get to Chattanooga in a regular Uber.

In a regular Uber, yeah.

That's a long ride. Yeah, they should have that secondary market. Like, Hey, I don't know. I'm hurt. I'm not going to die. Get me over. You know what I'm saying? Maybe a thing of Narcan in the door.

I feel like Uber could do something for you. Uber emergency.

Uber emergency. Uber E.

Uber E, yeah.

Uber E. It's a little more expensive. They'll drive like a mania. You maybe get a little yellow light or something.

Yeah, nothing crazy. Just something that's like if somebody who delivers mail in a rural community, they would put that little orange.

I don't have it in their car. They got the minivan. You ever seen them left-hand drive minivans? Oh, yeah.

Stick you with something.

Dude, my mom would deliver newspapers, so she would have that one arm, boy, it was just a dog. That thing would damn...

Was she on a left-hand drive, too?

It played for the Mets, dude. No, she'd keep that window down. She'd be saying something to me, and I'd have to just... Just watch out. Every time, brother. And if you did, you missed the Kaden.

You heard the wind come off this thing.

Oh, you missed the canes, baby. You was full of the news.

See, that's a mama you don't talk back to. She probably got a backhand from...

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He did. Yeah, I I graduated in 2018, so I got out at a good time.

Yeah. I started playing music right out of high school.

Really?

Yeah, he was actually in college a while while we played music, and he'd have to make deals with his professors to come back and take tests and stuff because we'd be out on the road.

Yeah, our When I got on my first tour, I was like a sophomore, and I went to my advisor, and I was like, Look, I need two weeks. I'm going to do it regardless. Please let me make my work up because I want to go to school.

Yeah, and what college was it at?

South Alabama. University of South Carolina. Usa, huh? Usa. Red, white, and blue. South in your mouth.

That's their mascot? Oh, yeah. Oh, my God.

The mascot is a jaguar.

Yeah, but the motto is South in your mouth.

You all beat that SEC team one time?

It was Mississippi State. I was on the sideline for that one.

Really? You all beat State?

Yeah, we celebrated like it was the Super Bowl. We came into the house. They missed a field goal to win the game, and we rushed the field too early. We had to come back.

We rushed the field too early.

They were still probably at three quarters to play. They missed the field goal. We out there celebrating on the logo. It ain't even half-time.

South in your mouth, south in your mouth. South in your mouth, dude. What is this right here? Oh, a British man has the largest penis in the United Kingdom.

That's not a lot of people in that country, just to say. Yeah. Us is what? Almost 400, 400 million?

Probably roughly a good 400 million.

This is in the news. What do we got here?

It's about as big as Rhode Island.

It can be a nightmare, is that right? Yes, I think people have It's a very insolvenous topic to bring up. I think people have learned a lot of myths from penography and stuff where they don't realize the implications that it would have when you're actually living with the situation. You got to get that paper up. When did you first realize that perhaps you had a little bit more than some of your classmates or some of your teammates in the sports team?

Classmates?predictively, it was in the morning hours at school. I think that's what everyone has the first.

This dude looks like a creep.

This dude looks like a creep. Yeah, this guy. First of all, this guy seems like a trap. I bet this guy is not the biggest wiener. He just is saying that, which is a great thing to say. And then you surprise somebody with a basic wiener. But the man saying your classmates, how do you know? When you're like, Hey, let me borrow a ruler, and you're like, Oh, never mind, actually. I got it under control.

That's a creepy situation. He looks like a school teacher.

Yeah. Why would you go on the news about that, though? Just to talk about it.

Dude, I think to- It's a great point.

It's a lot of ego right there.

What's the UK got going on?

Let take this wiener for a walk.

I'm going to be on the news.

How did they find out? Is he posting about it?

He told. Who's he telling? Nobody's emailing the news like, In the park yesterday.

Nobody has ever asked him to prove it, though. He's just going off word of mouth.

Yeah, that guy should definitely have to show up every year at a certain meetup.

Oh, they're mine.

They brought the ruler out, man. That man has posed with a ruler.

Oh, Where's he going right there naked?

Look at that look on his face in that bottom one.

Why he won't get size reduction surgery despite all the downsides. See if you can find out what the downsides are. Just look real quick. Let's see. Because this is something... Because a lot of times, this is one of those things where you think a lot of things are going to be great, and then they're not. The reality of it.

I'm just surprised. This is the news over there.

What are they doing in the UK? You're going soon, aren't you?

Yeah, we're going to go over there. This is it, I guess.

You're going to have to bring him to a show, bro. You're going to have to go in the mix, dude.

Talk about yourself. I'm going to have to bring this guy on stage.

Is it something about Cambridge? Where did he say he was?

Yeah, Ben Shepard is his name. Yeah, does it say anything that he says is the problems? Oh, to get a reduction would cost $15,000.

Yeah, I guess your insurance. So does he need to start a gofund me? I don't know. He got an insurance in the UK. I don't know how it works.

He could start a gofund me.

That's true, huh?

Just keep the money.

Oh, that'd be the craziest thing.

Then you just have the money and the- And the wiener.

We had a guy that did a gofund me or whatever, and he was supposed to die or whatever, and he didn't die, and people were all pissed when they saw it.

I would imagine. That's a letdown. That's a scam.

Yeah. People were like, What's up, Ron?

Thought you were dead. Thought you were going to die. Where's my 20 bucks, man? Yeah, bro, huh?

All right, pay me back on it. Let's see that cash. I would hate it. It would be cool probably in college, but even then it would be- Listen, I was hatin' on it.

I'd hate it. No, it's not even fun.

Don't want it? I just wouldn't want to be known for that. It almost go back to being like one of those circus guys. Come see Wiener Baby or whatever.

What's up, man? What's your Wiener? Hey, getting paid is getting paid, man.

Yeah, I'll come see Mr. Watchwear or whatever they call him.

That guy's pretty much the new three-legged gentleman.

There he is. See, that's Franklin Tini.

Come see the snake lady. I wanted my $1 I paid back after I saw that.

I saw Tom Thumb, World's Smallest Horse once. It was enjoyable.

Was it a small horse?

God, it was a dog in a costume. Dude, it was this big, brother.

You think there's like an inbreeding to make them that size?

It looked like it wouldn't go to regular school, I'll say that, when I looked in its eyes, but it was this big, man.

You could tell.

He rode the short trailer. The short trailer. Did it still stand up on its own?

A little bit. It tried to.

Oh, man. We out here making fun of that horse.

I thought it was a pig that they glued some hair on.

It looks like a potbelly.

That horse got issues, man. We're bullying that poor horse.

Look at him. Look, man, that horse is on the road. It's probably opening up for a-Look at what?

Look at it.

For a no-humped camel. That horse is doing fine.

Paying money to see that horse.

You got the Budweiser horses.

I paid, I think, probably $2, $2.80 to see it.

Horses can do it. Why can't people do it?

That's a good point. That's a great point, huh? Yeah. Let people take the show on the road, man. Well, that's the thing. We're getting to a point where it's like little things are going to start to start up, and a man is going to be his own little homeless salt bay or whatever, and making meats out of his cart. Everything is going to have to be financed. People are having a tough time. Everything becomes for sale.

Yeah, I mean, everybody's moving into tiny homes, and they're going to start starting these little villages, have a little doctor and a dentist and a makeshift trading station.

We have an end-of-the-world plan, and sometimes I just wish it'd happen.

Sounds fun. You guys have a A little bit.

I can't talk about it because I can't tell you where we're at, but we all got little jobs already set up. We got land picked out. That's good. Sometimes I just think that'd be fun.

Well, you'd be a bet. Yeah, at least you would have a skill, too. You'd have a band skill.

Oh, we're going to be hunting and gathering. Yeah. There ain't going to be no more time for music.

When he's got Native American in him.

Yeah, I can track the Buffalo.

We grow the crops.

We're tracking the Buffalo, man.

We ain't got Buffalo in Alabama.

You don't know what's going to happen? We got something down there. I don't know, dude. I've been outside of some-Alabama Buffalo. Do you guys go on tour with the new band now, or it's just your tour now? Is there a point where you don't open for other bands? How does that work?

It's just our shows now, and they keep selling out. So we keep having to move to bigger venues because people are getting pissed about it. But we are actually opening up for the Rolling Stones on May the 30th.

So that's going to be cool. The Stones out was pretty exciting.

Where's Where's it at?

It's in Gillette Stadium, Foxborough. Wow. That's going to be pretty. That one actually just hit us last week.

So things like that are popping up all the time now?

Yeah, it's pretty cool because Mick Jagger allegedly has to approve all of the openers. So he approved us. I think we get to take a picture with them, too. I'm not sure.

What the rules are. We're at a point now where we're... I hate to say too big, but there's a point where you can't open for people, and there's Now we're in this weird state of trying to get people to open for us. It's like a juggling act of figuring that out. What bands are that can open for you, and what bands are we able to open up for, which really be like the Foo fighters and Chris Stapleton or something at this point. We only got to really do it a couple of times, especially with El. We did a whole tour with her, like 40 days.

She's the only one. She was the first one that took us out like that.

The only We've never done it with anybody else. That's awesome.

I saw her perform during COVID here in Nashville. Really? I haven't been to one of her shows, so I got to go check her out.

She's cool.

She's good. It's a good show.

Yeah. People love her. Was there a moment where you guys felt like, damn, we really got a real shot? Or we're making it? What does this look? Was there one moment where you guys all just maybe walked into a place and sat down, and then you looked at each other and you're like, damn, are we making it? Are we doing it? Yeah, because it's a weird thing, but it's a real thing that happens.

We have little moments like that, when we first got on the tour bus and got off of our normal bus.

Oh, I can imagine that. Getting that Prevost.

Getting driven around in a Prevost. We sold out three days at the Ryman in four hours, and that was really cool, too.

And those were in September. Is that the ones coming up in September?

That was a moment, because we We knew we had a good feeling we'd sell one. And then it was like, Okay, the second one, we got to throw it up right now within the hour. And then it's like, We got a third one. We probably could have done five nights.

And then the manager was like, Hey, pick an opener right now for a third night.We doing it.Okay, let me see. We got to throw it up in 30 minutes.

I'd say that's a moment. And we got some big shows coming up this fall that are going to be one of those moments. I don't know, specifically, but those rooms are getting bigger.

Yeah. Do you pick We pick our openers together like that as a group?

Yeah, we pick all our openers. We in dust fun.

I mainly let Drew and Andrew, you all, do a really good job at picking them. Yeah.

We just find music we like and send it to the agents and take what they call us. Can we get them?

We have friends, too, like Taylor Honeycut. She's from Montgomery, and she got started about the same time we did, and she's on the up climb as well. She's actually on one of our Rhymen shows.

Taylor Honeycut? Mm-hmm. This is great, man. It's going to give me a lot of good stuff to listen to.

Yeah.

Oh, Belgian man whose body makes its own alcohol cleared of drunk driving. Yeah, I've heard about this before. It's a syndrome.

Sounds like alcoholism.

Yeah, it does. But it's where your body makes booze. Let me see. A Belgian man has been acquitted of drunk driving because he has auto brewery syndrome. A rare condition whereby the body produces alcohol, as the lawyer said. Wow. People are not born with ABS, but can develop it when they already have another intestine-related condition. Patients can present with symptoms consistent with alcohol intoxication, such as slurred speech, stumbling, loss of motor.

So he's always buzzed. Yeah, that's not similar. He's just always drunk.

That's got to be crazy, though, if you just- To not have to drink anything, but you're always buzzed.

People are like, damn. How does that happen? Does he have to put fruit juice in and get some hooch out?

I don't know. Like, Randy's burping, you all. It's going to be a pull over.

Don't let him drink that apple juice.

Yeah, pull over, baby.

He's peeing liquor at that point.

Don't let him drive, man.

I have a hard time believing. That sounds like some European stuff.

Auto brewery syndrome or gut fermentation syndrome is a condition in which ethanol is produced through the endogenous fermentation by fungier, bacteria in the gastrointestinal system, oral cavity or urinary system. Danks, you make your own... That body wine, baby.

So does that come with the problem of drinking too much alcohol, too? I don't know. Are you literally an alcoholic?

I guess just by standing around.

What happens if it gives blood?

Shit, I don't know. I'll take a pint, though. I'll take two pints, dude.

Hook that man up.

What else? Any other news we got? I did see they had... What was that? Oh, they had a dog that... Did you see this? It's like, look it up. It's a dog. Yeah, this is it.

Therminator?

Throwflame unveils Robot Dog Therminator with flamethrower attached. The Ohio-based... It's happening. $9,400. Look at this dog you can... $9,400?

That's the Boston Dynamics doll.

Yeah. Dude, that's like Elon Musk when he put those flamethrowers out, except you can have it hooked to a robot. $94.

Look at That's Elon Musk at fire, dude.

That's a nice... That's a decent used car price right there. You could have that 2008 Durango out there.

What do you need that for? What's the purpose of that dog with a flamethrower?

Burn stuff. Yeah, light a cigarette, probably.

Burn a trash pile.

Dude. Or cook up some damn catfish, dude. I'll tell you this, that thing will grill up a tilapia, homie.

Man.

Bro, that thing could be a waiter for that homeless guy with that cart.

We're going to start seeing some crimes. What if this is- That guy who just set himself on fire in New York.

If he was going to do that, he could have done it with one of those dogs.

Yeah.

It would have been cool. It would have made the news probably a little bigger.

Yeah, it would have added more.

He was trying to start a revolution, apparently. Was he?

Yeah. You haven't seen that?

I didn't see it. I know that it happened.

Yeah, there's some protest.

I know a man set himself on fire.

If you're going to start a revolution, at least use a robot dog with a flamethrower to do it.

Yeah. Are those legal? We're going to stop seeing drive-bys, and it's going to be people walking.

It's 9,400. I'll tell you this, if you get angry at your neighbor, that thing, you could burn someone's home down. Yeah.

Just comes out of the garage and walks across the street.

Like, Oh, shit. Hey, Jim, check out what I got.

Or be petty. Don't even burn the house down. Just burn their bushes down. Yeah.

Oh, that would be the worst, where you come out in the morning and your azaleas are gone.

Trash their grass.

So what do you all folks think as your lives change? Has that been interesting or has it been I mean, it's been so long.

It's just normal, I guess. Yeah.

I know it seems like we just come out of nowhere, but we've been doing this for seven or eight years now.

So they've been on the bandwagon the whole time?

I mean, yeah, my mom really wanted me to finish college because I did. But you did. Yeah, I did. I was like halfway through sophomore year when I realized I could just do this. And she really wanted me to finish. She wasn't paying for it either. Did you get your degree? Yeah, I got it. Oh, yeah. It's hanging up.

I was blessed in the sense of my parents weren't very hands-on as far as that goes. They were like, Well, trust God and do what you're going to do, man. Just pray and have a relationship with God and go find your calling. I didn't really have people holding my hand too much or overbearing parents or anything like that.

I could see it being tough, though, as a parent, and that's what your kids getting into, because especially our parents, they grew up in the '70s, '80s. Back then, it was a lot different.

Yeah, dude, shooting heroine. My dad was waiting for me. My dad works in construction, so I was like, Yeah, son, if you want to be a rock star, go do it.

That's awesome. Yeah, it probably is. I guess that's a two different type of parents. It's either you got to go with something safe Or are you going to be like, Dude, I've had to do something safer. Won't you get out there and take a swing at it, boss?

Well, what people need to realize is whatever you want to do, you have to make that your safety net. You can only go so long with a backup plan or a side job. You can't be half in, half out. Eventually, you're going to just have to dive into it and make that your safety net. Yeah.

Figure it out.

Yeah, that's a good point, man.

Even with comedy, you hear a lot of comics started out sleeping in the back of their cars. I mean, same with musicians, sleeping out in their cars to go do another show the next day, and you just got to send it.

I remember I was in love one time with a girl, and I was like, I tried to stop and do real estate for a while, and I couldn't do real estate real good. I actually filled out one of the leases wrong or something. Bought the house yourself. No, I had to pay some lady's rent, though. Really? Yeah, I messed up.

There After COVID, I sold roofs. You sold roofs? Yeah. During 2020, when those two or three hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast at once. Oh, yeah. Everybody was down there just selling roofs, and I was working with one of the companies that was owned by one of my friends because he knew COVID had happened, and shows weren't very common at the time. So he hooked me up with a job working with him. I think I sold three or four roofs, and every single roof that I sold, he lost money on. He'd get under there and just find more and more stuff wrong with it. It ended up being a $40,000 job, and the insurance only covered $20,000 of it.

You're like, Brandon, what the...

I'm not a good roof seller, man. I'm not a good salesman, period. Because salesman's job is to convince you to buy something, and my attitude was just like, buy it or not, I don't care. If you don't want it, no skin off my back. It's the opposite of what you're supposed to do.

Hurricane jobs are a real thing where we are. It's really true, huh? You hope for them hurricanes.

Well, it's so funny. It's like you... Yeah, So many of my friends work in where they sell the kelp process, people's insurance claims and all of that.

That's what I got during COVID. That's what I got during COVID. My fiancé's dad is an insurance adjuster. So I was like, untrained. I was climbing on people's roofs, stuff with them. I had no idea. I was up there just circling stuff.

Just drawing whatever? Yeah.

I'd sign my name on half of them, just go up there and circle damage and take a picture of it. Well, what's scary is-I would hate to be those homeowners. You got this hippie coming and climbing on your roof, up there, coloring and drawing.

Yeah, he's just writing widespread panic lyrics up there.

Yeah, you need a new roof.

Draw the whaling symbol. Yeah.

Have you guys gotten to meet Widesprade?

No. No. I mean, we listen. I wouldn't say we're the biggest fans, but I think everybody's listening to them at this point. Yeah, yeah.

It's just something you don't hear a lot of people get to meet. It's just they're like one of those interesting groups.

It's like we played with Eric Church. We didn't meet him. He sent a bottle of whiskey with a note, but we didn't meet the guy.

I think it's because he would literally fly in and play the show and fly out.

I think that's how a lot of those really, really big guys are. They come in, get business done, and they're out.

I went to Eric's house a couple of years ago. Oh, yeah, you're going out with them. Yeah, and wrote a song Me and Matthew and Drew wrote a song with them.

How did something like that get set up?

I have no idea. I think one of them booking agents reached out to them.

Probably. Yeah, I think it got set up to the managers, and I don't really know.

I can't remember how that went about, if he reached out to us or if we reached out to him.

Are there writing sessions that you have scheduled coming up thing, or is that just once in a while thing? How does Because you guys have a new album, so you won't be writing for a while, or you just write as you go?

Me, Drew, and Matthew make a yearly trip up here in January after the new year, and we usually stay up here for a week and do a bunch of writing. We're trying to do that more often now. But yeah, sometimes we'll meet people, too, and just get a co-write schedule. A lot of times, though, when we write our stuff of our own, it happens when we're at It's very hard to write and make music when you're touring all the time.

Most of our songs come from Brandon, Drew, and Matthew writing rather than from a co-write somewhere. It's just how it happens.

That's how it happens, man.

We play all the new records at the live shows, pretty much. Oh, sweet. That's how we test them out.

Yeah, and so the response has been good.

That's how we even do it before we even go in the studio. We just start playing stuff. If the crowd, if we don't feel a good response, then we go back and change a couple of things, and they grow with us on the road, and we get... I mean, it's quick feedback.

You're constantly in a space where you can experiment.

Yeah, we can test. Yeah.

That's pretty awesome, huh?

It was like going out and trying jokes on the crowd. See if it would last or not.

Yeah, no, that is one nice thing about having shows where you're just cruising along and you're working and you're writing at the same time, because I learn a lot of times in the moment up on stage. I think you can write it, but it's... Yeah. After a while, you know your voice, too, and you know what will roll for you.

I think that's what you can'tYeah, that's scary. That's what you can't get. And I'm not knocking anybody who does The Voice or American Idol, because if that's your way, if that's the path you want to take, then cool. But you can't skip the road dog in it. You can't skip playing in front of a crowd or playing in front of empty rooms. No matter if you win a TV show or not, you're still going to have to acquire that experience, or it's just you're going to have a hard time navigating, trying to figure out how to work a crowd or figure out what works and what doesn't work.

Yeah, that's a good point. I would hate to have had a chance to have a larger crowd and not known. I mean, even then, it's still tough sometimes because you're in front of a huge group of people. I mean, you see all the time, entertainers have problems with people throwing them out. We've had to throw people out of shows or people throwing stuff at... Nicki Minaj gets something thrown at her every other week, it looks like. But I don't understand that. Yeah, me neither. But it's like, there's always going to be that element that you're in a live space, but to not have had the reps of like, I know how to be here.

It gives you some confidence, too.

Yeah.

But yeah, I couldn't imagine, especially a comedian like you're saying, that just gets thrown out to the wolves. Here's an arena. Good luck. But a lot of those guys off Kiltoni will have to do that. That's a good point. They go from a minute to, I don't know what you get as an opener. You get a couple more?

Yeah, that's the goal. I remember when you got to They usually start you with three minutes.

As a first opener?

Yeah, comedian with three minutes. When you're first starting out, they're like, Okay, you're on a show. It's like you're going to do three minutes. And you're like, Okay, can I get through three minutes? And if you have to get down early, you're just like, I'm done. And they're like, Well, you weren't, but okay, come on back here. And then you try to get up to five. And when you really start feeling like you're rocking as a comedian is when you get to like...

That 15 mark? Yeah, I could see that. You got a little time to get uncomfortable.

You're like, I might go on the road. You might start saying this shit like that to people. People are like, You're out of your mind. You work at Derry Queen. You know what I'm saying? You're out of your mind.

I got a 15 minutes set, man. You don't know me.

You don't know me. I'm going on a tour. I'm out of here. And you just start yelling at people while you're trying to throw that trash into the bin at night behind the Derry Queen.

Testing it out on the homeless people still hanging around outside.

Yeah. And then that's when it gets like... That's when you can go on the road with somebody. But then there's those moments where you get stranded, you burned all your 15 in 10 minutes. It was a bad show, and you still have to kill five minutes.

We've had shows where you just want it to be over.

Yeah. What is it? It sounds as if this is the energy of a room. It's just the night. It just is what it is.

I mean, we had one recent.

Sometimes it's just from being tired. We're just trying to think now we're no more than four shows a week and no more than three in a row. Because by that third show, and we've had five shows in a row, and it's like, by that third show, you usually need a break. And at the end of the day, you're taken away from the crowd anyway, because if you're up there tired and too tired to give it your all, then you're selling your crowd short.

Yeah, you just go into the motions. But I mean, we've done that, and people at the show is like, That's the best show I've ever seen.I'm.

Like, Hey, we're sorry.Sometimes it's like Tortuga, though, where it's like everybody's vibing to a completely different style of music than we play. And then we show up just playing rock and roll, and the crowd's just like, Bring back the beat.

It's like a bro country or pop country, and then we're in the middle of it, and we don't even consider ourselves country. It's just like we ruin everybody's beach party. They're out there. They want songs about getting drunk.

I could see that. You guys are in a little bit It's not your own space, but what is it?

I don't know. We just do what we want, I guess.

We call it non-dom-rock. I like that. Non-denominational rock and roll. It's just like all over the place. I like that.

All over the place. Everybody's at that beach, and we're like, Here's one about mental health. Enjoy. If you know somebody.

Strays, though. That's what strays do, man.

Yeah, that part came from just being, I wouldn't say outcast, but we were always a little different from the crowds we grew up in. Didn't quite fit in. I went to private school. I didn't fit in with a lot of those kids.

I didn't really put that together, too. Yeah, we were straying from the...

From the norm?

From the norm, musically. A lot of people don't really know where to put us.

Well, there's some riffs in there. Sometimes I feel like some of it has an Aerosmith. It's interesting. And I'll go through different moments where I feel different things.

Yeah, it's just... When we're making music, we don't try to sound like anybody. We just do what we think sounds cool. I think that's really cool, find your own little niche.

Yeah. Well, look, I think it's just a testament. But to be able to figure out what works for five guys at once, it's pretty remarkable. Because you really have five inputs, even though you have only three or four guys contribute maybe on the songwriting edge.

We still We all work it up together.

Yeah, we all create the song together.

But then, yeah, it just goes back to not being able to skip that step, playing in front of crowds together as a band and road dogging it. Everything that comes along with all of that, That's where you start to figure out how each other plays or what each other is about to do. It's like, what is it? Telekinesis?

Telekinesis? Tele-telekinetic? No, it's not tele. What's the word we're looking for? Were Telepathic.

When women all get on the same menstrual cycle or whatever, on a volleyball team.

We definitely have that. Oh, yeah.

Well, we're on the same musical cycle.

I like that, man. Any unique things that have happened out on the road? Any wild cat?

Oh, man. We got stories for days.

Anything that really shook you out there?

Man, we-We're in recent or just in general?

Back in the day, we've had bus fires. We've blown... We did a whole transmission swap ourselves in Colorado. No way. We bought another bus.

We We were going through Colorado, I think I-70 had washed out.

Yeah, I-70 was washed out. So we had to go the fair play up to where South Park is, and it's 13,000 feet. And we had to go the back way to get to Grand Junction.

We were going up the side of this mountain, and I was laying in my bump.

I was driving.

I hear Andrew screaming. I had my headphones in, and I hear him screaming, We just blew the transmission out. And we're literally on the side of a mountain.

Yeah, it's 90 degrees straight down, 90 degrees straight up. Two-lane road, just right there.

Right against the side of it with rocks, and there's a falling rock sign. And Drew steps out of the bus and hits some gravel and immediately falls down.

Just pissed.

He gets up and starts punching the bus.

I just knew it was happening. We're just going. And when you get up that high with our diesel, especially, you lose the math. You lose what, 3% for every 1,000 feet or so?

Of what? Brain power or whatever?

Our brain power. No, for the motor. Oh. If the air is so thin, the motor has to work harder.

Probably some brain power, too.

Yeah, we're definitely losing some brain power. I'm not good with altitude. I've had some bad times.

And how did you get that thing back down? You had a tow truck?

Yeah, we had to order. We had to get a semi truck. We loaded the bus up and our trailer.

Like a $5,000 tow to the Buna Vista.

A state trooper gave us a ride as well, out of the goodness of his heart. And yeah, Buna Vista, Colorado. And there was one hotel room left in that whole town because I was calling and calling and calling while we were waiting on the tow truck and finally got it. And we all piled up in that one hotel room. I'm like, Well, what are we going to do? Me and Andrew. So we had the bus dropped off at a transmission shop in town, and it was probably a good four miles away. And we got up the next morning, right before the sun come up, and just start walking towards it.

And we're like 10,000 feet. I mean, we're sea-level men. We're getting winded. We're getting winded. We're getting winded. We're sea-level men. We're getting built for that.

We I'm trying to make it to the transmission shop, and he's like, Man, I'm two months backed up. Get this thing out of here. I can't work on this. And so we're walking back to the hotel, wondering what we're going to do.

And we've been in that situation before because we've had to roll up to shops like, Hey, we ain't leaving. You're going to fix it, or we stay in here with you. And it's not like, we just have to throw money at people. Just work on it. We'll pay you whatever. And he's not having it. Damn. He's like, Sorry.

Isn't that where the Shining is, where the hotel is?

In Buena Vista?

I don't think so. I don't think so. This is not a very nice... I mean, it's beautiful, but it's not a big town, where that big hotel would be. Okay. Ben might have to pull that one up. I'm not sure where that's at.

Yeah, see where that's at, Ben.

It is up in the mountain somewhere, though. Is that Montana? It's in Oregon, man. Dude, that place is in England? No, the interiors were filmed.

No, the Shining, yeah. The interior, the Real Overlook Hotel, maybe? Mm-hmm.

We got Good Godly Woman and the sequel to the Shining for two seconds.

Oh, Oh, yeah?

Yeah. Dr. Sleep.

But to continue what we're talking about was we started walking back just like, What do we do? And we had to start me and Brandon's hitchhiking to this town in Colorado, literally walking out with a thumb out. Yeah, with a thumb out.

Yeah, with a thumb out. This old guy in the Jeep picks us up, and he gave us a ride to the hotel.

We were just like, We have to do something. Damn. We've been picked up by a stranger a bunch of times.

He dropped us off, and he was like, Hey, there's a whitewater rafting company that sells busses like the one you're talking about. Maybe hit them up, see if you can buy a bus from them. And we were like, Yeah, whatever. Thank you. Still tried to find someone to rebuild the transmission, and the closest person that was in Denver.

It's like three hours away.

He said, If you pull it and bring it to me, I'll build it for you. And so before we resorted to that, we had rented a U-Haw van and went and talked to that company, the whitewater rafting company. And he had a bus just like ours that had a freshly rebuilt transmission in it. And he put 30 miles on it and parked it because he bought a school bus. They used the busses to bus people out to the river to whitewater wrap. And he said he'd sell us the bus for three grand. And then he figured out we were a band. And he was like, If you all play a show for us, I'll knock a grand off the price. No way.

And we were here for four days, and the place is... So they do that white water rafting. All these teenagers come to be the gods. A bunch of river rats come in, and they... You know those campers on the back of a pickup truck? Yeah. It's a field full of them.

Just laying on the ground.

That's where these kids are living.

In those?

Yeah, and the grass is all grown up around them, and they don't have power.

So it's just the ground and then the camper top?

And the camper top, and it's like a trailer park of them.

They're everywhere. But it's not a full trailer. It's just the little-It's just that little cabin. It's just a cab and top. It's just a cab and top, isn't it?

What do you mean? Yeah, I think you can stand up in them, but they have that little... The part in the top you can sleep in.

Here's what I'm picking a picture on a pickup truck, and then that thing that goes on the back.

That goes on It goes on the bed. Yeah, it sits down in the bed.

It goes on the bed and goes over the cab.

It goes over the top of the cab.

Oh, no, not that. I'm just thinking of the one that just goes... That's even-Oh, you're thinking of a camper shell?

No, this is like a motorhome.

Well, now I know what you're talking about. With the piece that goes over the top.

Yeah, and they're all windows. And they're all window unit in them sometimes.

And these are straight hippies.

And there's no trucks, just those?

Just those. And the grass is all grown over top of them. They're living in them. Yeah. Yeah, it's like those. Not as nice. Like that one on the top right.

Yeah, 100 %.

No. Oh, left. That one's too That one. It's a bunch of those. And these kids are straight up real-life hippies. We were playing, we set up and played for them, and they were dancing in between songs thing. It's all gravel, it's all dusty in here in the rafting building. It was probably 30 or 40 of these kids. When I say kids, they're probably in their late teens, early 20s.

It was in the big building where they keep all the boats. We sat up in there, and it was like a gravel floor, and just the dust from them, like scoping, shuffling.

Shuffling, that hippie shuffle.

Dude, that's incredible. And that was... Yeah, look up, see what rafting company that was? That's phenomenal.

Yeah, whitewater rafting in Buna Vista. Yeah, we can... I mean, there's a couple. It's in Buna Vista. Some whitewater, something.

So then you guys take off in that new bus? Well, no.

We get the tow truck to drop our bus off next to the one we just purchased, and then we just start taking them apart. And we took the transmission out of ours, took the transmission out of the other one, and swapped them around. And I did something wrong in the process. I didn't put the torque converter all the way in. And so we bolted it up and bent a pump gear and had to pull it back out and take it to that original transmission shop. And we pulled what he was talking about Hey, we need you to fix this. We ain't leaving.

He ended up having a soft spot. He actually helped us out big time.

He took it apart and straightened out what I had accidentally bent and put it back together, and then we got it back in there. A two-day job turned into a five-day job, and it was miserable.

But while Brandon and a couple of the... And this is just the five of us on the road together. They would be working on dropping the transmission or getting the other one ready. Me and Zack would be just ripping every part we could get our hands on on this bus. You don't see these busses ever in a pool apart. Usually somebody will take them. It's a 7.3 diesel. Those never show up. So we're getting every part you could put a hand on, snatching it out. We took out the turbo, we took the back AC unit, we took the driver's chair, took the steering box underneath it. That thing would never drive ever again in its life. We just straight pull apart.

Somebody asked if they could have it, and we were like, Yeah, you can have it.

It was a carcass, huh? Yeah, he said, Steer it over here, and I'll pull it. I was like, You ain't steering nothing. So we straight left it.

You're like, We took the steering.

We took everything. That thing was we took the bumper. We swapped the bumpers, everything. I took the tail lights. But we got it put back. Our bus put back together with all these other parts and got down to Mississippi.

So you guys had to miss some shows in, or you had a little break?

I think we missed one show. Did we?

I don't know if we did.

Where were we heading? Mississippi. No, we were heading somewhere else.

Oh, Grand Junction. We missed the last Colorado show, but we had four days off, so we made it. We just buckled up and drove.

Wow.

Yeah, that was a time in our lives. Looking back, it was fun. In the moment, it was... I think it was that American Adventure Expedition. It looks familiar. Yeah.

We went to stop somewhere that's a good whitewater raft, and it was in Tennessee, though. It was over near Chattanooga.

I've never done it before.

It looks fun. It's nice, man. They didn't take us out.

You think that had been part of the deal, but there's your bus.

Oh, man. That's it. I mean, that's the town.

That's where we were trapped for four days.

It was beautiful. It looks like it. Oh, yeah, but we were underneath that thing, bench pressing this transmission, and this dude comes by, and he crawls up under there with us. He's hippy. He had a big mustache. He's like, Let me touch everybody. Get his hands on us.

Eliza Thornberry's dad mustache.

He's like, Man, we're having a moment right now. I was like, Yeah, man, we're having a moment this whole week. Thank you.

Then he offered us some drugs.

He's like, Man, you all like to party? Yeah, we like to party. He's like, Man, I got ketamine. I got cocaine. I've got all sorts of stuff. We're like, No, man, we're good. We're going to bench press this transmission.

Wasn't really good at reading the room, just covered in grease, trying to put a bus ride together.

I ain't doing no cocaine with someone who's super homeless.

Oh, yeah. These are...

You know? If someone is a little homeless, yeah, I'll see where you're not living at. Let's party.

Come back to my camper. We'll hang out.

But if somebody's super homeless, dude, I'm out.

That could have been it, too. That looks pretty familiar.

What was across? There was two of them across the street from each other. There was a dominoes down the street. That's all we had to eat. Oh, yeah, there always is. Next to a mechanic shop. They shared a driveway because they hated each other.

Where did you guys sleep at where you were there?

The hotel was right in front of the rafting place.

I think that last night we had to sleep on the bus. Yeah, we did. As it was still blocked up, we opened the windows and camped out in it, man. Just like the hippies.

Hell, yeah. And that was when you were like, Oh, now I see where that guy was coming from. Yeah.

That was a tough time.

Yeah, there was dominoes.

Yes, and I think it was... It's the one across... It's the adventure company.

That's who you guys are, man. You all are the adventure company. You guys have been on a lot of adventures, man.

I got a good rate. That's the wrap. That's the Look at this. There's that building, go up one, Ben. That one.

No, you all played in that raft room.

No down, that one. Yeah, we played in that raft room right there. Amen. That's where we set up. They were still rafts hanging around. People were hanging out at them watching the show. It was cool.

Bro, that's unreal-looking.

We'll have to get in contact with those folks.

If you guys went back through there at some point- Probably that bus is still laying where we left it.

We need to go check on that bus.

Yeah.

Amen, man.

They hate that. The mechanic shop next door, they hated each other.

But you guys were like the bridge between them that time, huh?

Except we left that bus. That mechanic said he was going to go get it. I bet he never went and got it. He's probably still sitting in the same place.

Any stray animals you pick up out there? Speaking of the strays.

No, not really.

I'm trying to think. We've hit some animals.

Amen. We did. And RIP, sorry. But hey, look, sometimes the Lord uses you and your vehicle to bring an animal home.

Exactly.

It's good for the population.

Let's just respond somewhere.

Yeah. Dude, I'm so excited about the new album. When will it come out? Do we know yet?

We're thinking late summer.

Yeah, hopefully around August time. It's about to start picking back up again. I think everybody's going to really like it.

I'm amazed that you guys aren't even impressed with yourselves yet.

I don't know, man. That's one of those things you can't take it for granted. It can be taken from you tomorrow.

Yeah.

It's like-We could skinnard this thing and die in a plane crash.

Hopefully not. People get popular, too, and they're popular for however long. And then time goes by, and then nobody knows who they are anymore. That could very well be us. Who knows? Just try to be thankful for it and never want to be Complacent, I guess. Always want to be trying to get better and just be a better person, put on a better show, and be a better band, make better music. Just never stop growing.

Yeah. Well, the rest Most of us are impressed, man. I'll say that, dude.

Good deal.

There's a lot better music out there. For sure.

Thank you guys so much for making good tunes. Yeah, excited to hear the new album. Do we even know a name of it yet?

Give it to them, Brandon. Huh? Just give it to them.

The album is going to be called Made by These Moments. Nice. It's got a good message to it. I'm excited. I'm excited for people to hear the music, but it's just got a good message as well. So it's going to be cool.

No, we've never told anybody that publicly. Nice.

You heard it here first.

I'm sure he'll email me tomorrow and ask me to take it out, but that's all right.

No, we're in charge here, buddy.

We make the calls.

Oh, man.

We make calls. Yeah, well, thanks for sharing that made by These Moments, man. Yeah, it's a lot of what life is, making them good ones, too.

I mean, that's what it stands for for us. All the stories we were just talking about is why we're here. So it means a lot to us.

Amen. Red Clay strays, boys. Thank you guys so much, man. I appreciate it. Thank you guys for coming and just chatting and spending time. Good to get to know you guys a little bit. I look forward to coming out and be able to catch another show soon.

Yeah, you just let us know. We always got a spot on the list for you.

Gang, baby, you guys stay healthy out there, man. You, too.

You, too, man.

Thank you.

Now, I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones. But it's going to take.