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- The following is a conversation with Oliver Anthony, singer-songwriter from Virginia, who first gained worldwide fame with this viral hit "Rich Men North of Richmond."
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He became a voice for many who are voiceless with his songs speaking to the struggle of the working class in modern American life.
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His legal name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford.
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Oliver Anthony was his grandfather's name.
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So Chris used this name as a dedication to his grandfather and to 1930s Appalachia, where his grandfather was born and raised.
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"Dirt floors, seven kids hard times," as Chris says.
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He's happy to be called either one, by the way.
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I've gotten to know Chris more since the recording of this conversation.
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He truly is, as he appears online and in his songs, down to earth, humble and a good man who deeply feels the pain of the downtrodden.
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This is a Lex Fridman podcast to support it.
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And now, dear friends, here's Christopher Lunsford, or as many of you know him as, Oliver Anthony.
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So I was texting you last night sitting at an open mic, listening to a guy perform "Great Balls of Fire."
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Like I told you, he was giving everything he got for like five people in the audience plus me. - Well, you were there.
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I'd have been doing it too, if you were out there like, oh, that's like screaming. - No, man.
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He was this big dude on a keyboard, just everything.
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Sweaty, long hair, you could tell like he was there in his own little world.
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I love the courage of that, of just giving it everything.
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I don't think he wants to be famous.
1:44
I don't think he wants anything in life except to be there and to play like his heart out.
1:49
That's why I love open mics.
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Like some people still aspire to be famous when they play open mics, but some people, maybe they've given up or maybe they never wanted to be famous.
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They're just there for the pure artistry of it, so.
2:03
And you said you started out playing open mics.
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At shady bars, what was that like?
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- Well, yeah, real quick before I forget too.
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A great example of a guy who had that same mindset and was able to maintain it really well as this mandolin player named Johnny Staats in West Virginia.
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To me, he's one of the best and he's won all these awards and stuff, and he still works for UPS full-time.
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And like he could go out and tour with play mandolin for anybody he wanted to, but man, when you meet Johnny, like you can tell he's just got this joy in him that I don't think he would have if he...
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But as far as me with the open mics, yeah, it was just, it was, a lot of them were really, a lot of them were embarrassing.
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There was a couple, I remember there was times where I'd go up and try to do, I do like one song.
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I get like halfway through the next song and I'd be so nervous by that point.
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I couldn't remember any of the words.
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And there's a couple times, I remember there was one time in particular that I just walked off halfway through the song, put my guitar in the case and just, well, I just left.
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I didn't even, like, couldn't even stay in there, you know, just total freak out, but. - Just embarrassment.
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- And I never drank in bars either.
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Like I wasn't really a social drinker, so I was just there to try to do the mic.
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So it was kind of, I was a little out of place anyway.
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I feel kind of outta place in a bar to start with, so.
3:22
- Yeah, it's back when you could smoke in bars, there's a whole vibe to it.
3:25
People smoke and drinking and yeah, definitely.
3:28
You know, bombing in a place like that when the audience is like, there's like five people and they're bored.
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- Yeah, there was one like that. It was in Matoaka.
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It wasn't that far from where I lived.
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The place is gone now, but it was about as big as the room we're in here, if that, you know.
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Like the ceiling tiles were yellow from where everybody had smoked in it since the beginning of time.
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But like, yeah, that was my little spot.
3:52
Those little type of spots - You did covers? What'd you play?
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What was your go-to - Back then, it was like, I don't know, "Fishin' in the Dark," Nitty Gritty Band or like any of those old like Hank Jr.
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songs, like any of those bar type, David Allen Coe.
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Like "You Never Call Me By My Name," any of that kind of stuff.
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And I haven't even played any of those in forever now.
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But as any of those ones where you get people singing along and stuff, that's what I'd always try to do, you know?
4:18
- Yeah, that song you performed "Take Me Home, Country Road," how's that go? West Virginia? - Yeah. - It's a good song.
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- John Denver was just one of those guys that who knows where he would've went long term if he wouldn't have passed, but- - You know, it's a fun song that I love.
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I shouldn't, but I love is, what is it?
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Like, "Thank God I'm a Country Boy."
4:41
- I think that's what I liked about John Denver was he was a little bit like, he let himself be a little bit corny in the spirit of like, having fun with it.
4:49
Like great example, there's this older guy that not a lot of people have heard of named Roy Clark, but my farm's like a mile down the road from Roy Clark's old farm.
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But he used to be on Heehaw, I don't know if you've ever heard of that old show from like the '60s or whatever, but crazy dude, he could pick any instrument up, like there's videos on YouTube of him, but he would just sit there and just pick anything up and just rip it to death.
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But he would always just be real silly about it.
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He never took himself too seriously, you know.
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- Some people go to the fun place, some people go to the dark place.
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You know, country can do both.
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You more often go to the dark place, to the pain.
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- Yeah, well, especially some of the new songs that are coming out, they'll be probably not, I mean, I don't know what they'll be.
5:36
I don't know what is country anymore anyway.
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I don't know that many people who listen to the type of music that I grew up listening to and probably listen to country radio anymore anyway.
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Like, I think there's quite a lot of people who don't who've sort of disowned that space.
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You know, in commercialized country you only really get what sells and a lot of what sells isn't necessarily what matters.
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- Well you had that whole experience where they take what you recorded and "polish" it, quote unquote try to make it perfect.
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And then so doing destroy the soul of the thing.
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And so probably that happens with these big artists. They're so famous. It's like a machine.
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And so, what the machine does is it over polishes things.
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And so the raw like power of the person, the uniqueness of the person, the soul of the person is gone if you do that. - Yeah.
6:27
Well, I think professionalism, like applying the tactic, the tactics of corporate America to anything that is baseline artistic is not gonna end well.
6:37
- They're all individually brilliant, but together, this corporate speak comes out. - Yeah.
6:43
- Just the soul of the people dissipates. It like disappears.
6:48
Why are you all pretending that like life is not terrible and beautiful and like you're both scared shitless and excited, and this guy's going through a divorce, this person just fell in love.
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Like you're forgetting the intensity of life with this corporate, like nine-to-five.
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Like, hi John, it's great to see you today.
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(Oliver laughing) Oh, you too.
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You as well, you as well.
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But when I look at it, I'm like, "Why am I whining?"
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I feel like a Bukowski-type character because like, they're all really nice, they're all good people, but like something is gone when you have this corporate machine.
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- Well they're there to fill a role contractually.
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And I think if they bring too many of their human elements into that, then they jeopardize losing their sense of security.
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And it's all just out fear.
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It's out fear of losing your job.
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I mean, it's the reason why all the songs say Oliver Anthony and not Christopher Lunsford on them.
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You know, like it's fear of, it's so difficult to, especially now it seems, I mean, who knows?
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I was never around in the '40s or '50s to work a job.
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I'm sure they were probably pretty miserable back then, but you know, they talk about now like how difficult it is, like the impossibility of having a single family household or anything else.
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But like, when you find a decent-paying job that you can do without it just torturing you every day, that's a pretty important thing now.
8:16
You know, like, and so it's pretty easy to kind of turn yourself into a robot for eight or 10 hours a day out of fear of, it's like, you don't want to be yourself too much because maybe part of yourself isn't something that's accepted in this like, dystopian nightmare that you go to work at every day.
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And so you just gotta do your best to just not step on any toes or do anything that makes you stand out too much. You know?
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And now it's like, now like when you scroll through some of these videos of people, even when I was still, like, when I was still working my lame job, it was like there was this whole big thing of people talking about quiet quitting or something like that, where they were just gonna go to work but not really do anything but. - That hurts me so much.
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That hurts me when you just stop when you're there, but you're not really there. That makes me so sad.
9:05
- Yeah, so then they wonder, these companies just slowly kind of fall apart and disintegrate because they're so worried about structure and you know, like, I mean, God, man, even in America today, our culture has become, because so many big corporations own and manage everything that we live under.
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Like food, agriculture, healthcare, like social media, it's all in corporate structures that it's almost like a lot of the problems we find ourselves in now with society, I think are like, it's just because of, it's almost like corporate HR has been implemented into our whole thought process of everything.
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You know, it's like, I think that's kind of what you're touching on though.
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It's like, it's hard to be a human and be a good little corporate employee at the same time.
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And as our whole society moves more into like becoming like basically one big corporation, it's like, you don't wanna the HR lady off.
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So it's a lot easier for me to just beep.
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We're all sort of just turning, we're all turning into robots, you know, - And I've talked to great engineers about this.
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Jim Keller's a legendary engineer.
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Elon Musk is another example that you need that, I don't know what's a nice term for, but you need the asshole because you want to get to the ground truth of things, to the first principle of things like how do we simplify?
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How do we make it more efficient? How do we move faster? How do we get shit done?
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And that has no place for this kind of polite speak.
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And then, you know, other great team members swoop in and like repair the damage that the tornado has done.
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- Do you think that's, 'cause I'm not, I'm not super well versed about all this, so I'm probably dumb to even mention it, but this guy who's been helping me with doing a documentary, he's been following me around since the very first show, the August of '23.
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His background was doing promotional videos for Boeing, like for on their new spacecraft to pitch it to whoever.
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And so we touched base a little bit on Boeing, and of course, they're having a lot of problems now, it sounds like.
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And he was comparing that with SpaceX or with, you know, like, I think it's that exactly what we touched on with that thought process of that sort of dehumanization within companies.
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I think that's what ultimately causes maybe.
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I don't know if there's a connection there or not, but it seems like Boeing would be more of that.
11:28
They don't have that tornado.
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Like he was telling me, even just with his protocols and some of the people he worked with, like everything's just very, you know, lightly touch everything.
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You don't touch anything too hard.
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- So it's not just HR, it's just this managerial class where it's like Bob from this department has to schedule a meeting with John from this department and Debbie.
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like, they have to have a meeting 2 1/2 weeks from now.
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And then there's paperwork and that bureaucracy that's created in the managerial class just slows everything down.
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And one of the things that slowing everything down does is it really demotivates the people that are actually doing the shit.
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Like the people on the ground, the engineers that are building stuff.
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It's again, soul-drenching to like, be excited, show up, and now you hit this wall of paperwork.
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Like you have to wait for John and Debbie and I forgot the third guy's name that I imagined in my head, to have a meeting.
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And then you kinda slow down and you disappear in terms of that fire, that passion that's required to create big things.
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'Cause there's a lack of leadership.
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And if they don't believe in that leadership, then why the hell would they be motivated?
12:50
I mean, I remember a while back watching Jocko Willink talk about that when he was in leadership, when he was leading his guys.
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I think he mentions it in his book is probably where I remember seeing it, one of his books.
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And he talks about like how important it was for the people under him in rank to believe in the actions he was giving them, even if he necessarily didn't agree with him himself.
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It was like, it's really hard to take orders and go and like to have human spirit and especially in something that's innovative.
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If you're working for a company where you just think everybody's dumb, I mean, I can certainly relate with that. I mean, God, that's all.
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And at my old job, that's all we did was we spent half our day just talking about how dumb we thought everybody was that was above us.
13:38
You know, it's like, it's easy to fall into that in the corporate world.
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And so yeah, the morale gets terrible and everyone suffers as a result of it.
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You know, like the people at the top who are implementing all that dysfunction suffer and the people at the bottom, it's like, it's not good for anybody.
13:54
I had thought now that I'm doing this, that I could escape away from that.
13:58
But that exact same mentality and that dysfunction and that inefficiency, like, I still battle it every day.
14:07
- That's why it takes, it takes unique characters to lead the way.
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Such unique characters are very much needed in the music industry to revolutionize everything cut through the bureaucracy bullshit that ultimately is just a machine that steals money and doesn't get anything done, really. We'll talk about it.
14:24
By the way, all the love in the world to Jocko, he's great.
14:27
I've been going through lots of ups and downs in life, lots of low points for myself over the past shit, three years really, but recently especially.
14:39
And he always texts in this very high testosterone way of like, you good bro, (laughs) just checking in.
14:50
I mean, he's a good man, he's a good man.
14:52
He's obviously an inspiration to millions of people, but also just is a good human being himself, so.
14:59
- Maybe one sim one thing that we felt similarly, I would imagine you way more than me is just feeling like, wow, I have the ability to influence or the ability to either bring truth or to improve people's lives or you know, every word that you say sometimes matters so much and you're just like, man, I'm an idiot.
15:24
like I would've never guessed.
15:25
I mean, we were kind of talking about that before about like, it would've never guessed that it would've turned that this would've turned into all this.
15:30
But it is a weight that you bear whether you really even acknowledge it or not, you know, like.
15:38
- Yeah, and I think is like, you know, the songs you've created, they speak to the human condition, to the struggle of everyday working people in a society that has the elites that try to take advantage of those working people.
15:56
And you're just speaking through your music, those truths of how life is.
16:04
And then that has a huge impact on a lot of people. That's really positive.
16:09
But then you also get attacked and misrepresented and lied about from different angles.
16:15
And just the turmoil, the intense chaos of that, it disorients me like to be attacked by very large number of people to be lied about, to be just...
16:31
Because I love people, I have a general optimism about humanity. It just disorients me.
16:39
Like it gives me this feeling like.
16:42
Generally just like you said, think of myself as kind of an idiot, not really knowing what I'm doing.
16:49
And when a lot of people tell you that, "You're correct, you don't know what you're doing."
16:55
You start to like, wanna hide.
16:57
You wanna hide from the world, hide from yourself.
17:00
And then there's also just the chemistry of the brain.
17:02
It's like you shake up the brain a little bit, it starts getting weird.
17:07
And it's so it can get on many fronts. It can get real lonely.
17:13
When getting attacked, when you're kinda fucking things up in many ways, can get lonely. Yeah.
17:22
So you get a text from Jocko, like, "You good?" Yeah, yeah.
17:25
And then I mean I have good friends, like Andrew Huberman has been great. Rogan's been great.
17:31
- Well, you know, Lex, however her many years ago was in a different place in society than Lex is now.
17:38
And so it's like every conversation you have or every relationship you have is inherently different even if you aren't any different.
17:45
Friends that you had from before maybe, or even just new people you meet, your interactions with them are gonna be a lot different than if this wasn't a thing.
17:52
And so it's like, that can be tricky too, when you've spent your whole life, you know, from the time you're three years old and you're starting to play with other kids and like developmentally learning like, how to share and how to interact and you're playing on the playground with kids and learning how to like set rules and boundaries and how to like basically fit into society.
18:13
And like, so you have this whole learning pattern up until whatever point in time when success happens.
18:19
And then it's like all that shifts pretty dramatically you know, in a relatively short period of time.
18:25
And so like, how do you think like managing like previous friendships or like, you know, has that been tricky for you?
18:33
Or like how does that- - Yeah, it's been tough.
18:36
You know, I value deep close, long-term friendships.
18:40
And yeah, But I mean, I have amazing friends, but they certainly do treat me a little different.
18:46
They bust my balls noticeably less. - Yeah.
18:51
And you need that sometimes.
18:53
- Not sometimes, all the time.
18:55
First of all, it's how dudes show love is making fun of each other. At least my friends. - Yeah.
19:02
- Like, you know, when you watch, man, I'm gonna get in trouble.
19:06
But when you watch like women interact, they're often like really positive towards each other.
19:12
Like, "Oh, you look great," this like, yeah, yeah.
19:15
We watch dudes interact, like close friends.
19:17
They're just like, I mean, busting each other's balls.
19:20
Oh, stop making fun of each other.
19:24
And so yes, that has been a little bit harder.
19:28
I try to break those walls, but that's why with the famous friends, it's a little bit easier 'cause they can still like rogue and roast me nonstop. And it just feels good.
19:41
I just sit there and get made fun of and it's great. It's great.
19:45
0 And I still do it all the time.
19:46
It's just a different experience now.
19:47
But I'm like a Goodwill junkie.
19:52
Like most of even my clothes were from Goodwill, but like I have this like addiction with buying paintings from Goodwill. - [Lex] Nice.
20:00
- Like the $8 paintings where it looks like somebody was following along with like a Bob Ross video and it didn't work out quite right.
20:06
Like I buy every one of those.
20:08
I'll go in there and buy like 10.
20:09
You know, anytime you got into public now, it's just like, you know it's gonna be a little different than it was, you know, I don't know if that makes sense or not, but- - Yeah, for sure.
20:16
I mean, you know, I'm trying to deal with it, but all of it, when you talk to world leaders, when you step into politics a little bit and you apparently stepped into politics, even though you're not a political person, that world is like, what the fuck? It's very intense.
20:34
Especially at an intense moment in history in an extremely divided country, so.
20:41
- Yeah, like saying that I'm not in politics, people are like, "Well of course, you're in politics" and I don't know whether I am or not, but just, I do think a lot of people in politics, like as far as the people who sit on the internet all day and argue about stuff on X or on whatever, you know, Facebook and all, like, I do think their heart is in it for the right reasons.
21:02
They observe that there's a lot of things wrong in the world that they'd like to see different.
21:06
It's just, how do you get those people outta this four by four square and like, they're entrapped in a same kind of box that the people at Boeing might be with that struck, you know.
21:23
It's the tornado metaphor.
21:25
I mean, but it applies in politics too.
21:27
Like there needs to just be a tornado through politics and we need to just like lay all this other stuff aside and just figure out what's really pissing everybody off.
21:36
What's really affecting our quality of life.
21:38
A lot of times, we're arguing over the symptoms of problems instead of identifying the problems. If that makes any sense.
21:44
I mean, if Jordan Peterson were here, he would tell us about fire and how important that is and burning and like it, but it is all the same- - Water and fire and ice metaphor.
21:53
And there would definitely be a connection to the Bible.
21:55
And then we'll receive a three hour lecture with- - But it's true, but it's all true. - [Lex] It's all true.
22:00
- It's all 100% accurate. That's the crazy thing.
22:03
But it all ties into that same thing like, yeah, in politics now, it's almost like there's a rule book that you have to follow.
22:10
And if you can't agree with this unless you also agree with that.
22:13
And maybe it's like the places, the way that we receive information about what's going on in the political landscape is always so biased and it's like, well, it's contingent upon this algorithm, this like algorithmic system that we live under where it's like we're almost fed certain subcate.
22:33
And it's easy to fall into that because you don't like hearing things you disagree with.
22:37
And so it's a lot easier to just turn the TV on or go on Facebook and look at whatever page post things that you know you're gonna consistently agree with every day, and that's not gonna challenge the way you think in any little way, you know, or like expand your thinking at all.
22:53
It's a cult-like type of thing.
22:54
It's like, you know, "This is what we all agree with, and if you don't, then go on get," you know?
23:03
But we're far too complicated for it to really work that way.
23:06
- Well this actually relates to one of my favorite things in your conversation with Jordan, where you're just shooting the shit about like playing live music and he goes to Kierkegaard. - (laughs) Yes.
23:19
- She's like soaring Kierkegaard, the philosopher. I love Jordan so much. - I do too.
23:23
- He just goes to Carl Young Nietzche and there this idea from Kierkegaard that the crowd is on truth.
23:33
So there's elements to the crowd that loses the humanity and the honesty of an individual that makes up the crowd.
23:44
'Cause the default incentive of the crowd is to conform to some kind of narrative.
23:51
It's like a distributed system that arrives at a narrative and the narrative holds control over that crowd as opposed to the individual humans who are thinking for themselves and being honest with their own thoughts and realities and so on.
24:06
And so he was saying that as a reason from a communication perspective to speak to individuals in the crowd, not to the crowd.
24:16
So from the performer perspective, the moment you speak to the crowd, you're speaking to the lie that is the crowd according to Soren Kierkegaard It's pretty hardcore.
24:26
Kierkegaard is pretty hardcore, Jordan's pretty hardcore. - But that is true.
24:29
I mean, but specifically in my case, I mean really, it applies more than it probably does in a lot of cases with crowds and music.
24:39
You know, talking about Richmond, I wasn't necessarily even excited that Richmond did as well as it did.
24:46
It was like, in a way, it was almost like alarming that it did so well. You know?
24:50
And so those crowds that show up, like, maybe they do like my music, but I also think they're there for something.
24:57
There is something bigger about it.
24:59
I mean, I wish I would've done a better job of having people there at shows to capture some of those crowds I had in '24, man.
25:08
- You mean the size, the intensity? - The intensity.
25:10
Like it was revolutionary almost. - Song of Revolution.
25:15
You know, I think a redemption song from Bob Marley, like that song, it just connected with people. There's something there.
25:22
- Well, and so many people identified different elements.
25:26
Like I said, it goes back to when we were kind of talking when we first got here, but it was crazy how it was almost like at the beginning along with the scrutiny and some of the other things.
25:34
It was a lot of different people like, almost fighting over me or fighting over it.
25:38
Like, 'cause it resonated with people who voted differently than each other, which is probably a pretty terrifying thing if you're in the business of keeping people divided and angry at each other.
25:51
So, you know, it was one of the one of the only times that I can think where there was that much of a sense of unity among people who otherwise wouldn't.
26:04
I mean, like, I mean I think about 9/11 when I was a kid, I was in fourth grade, but God man, people were just like, people just put everything aside there for a little while and it was kind of like, there's bigger problems that just aren't in our face.
26:19
And if they're in your face for just for a second or two, you realize like, it's hard in your mind to create a graph that's got like all these, but you know, we argue about a lot of these problems but if you were to really look at them, like, if you really stand back and look at all the problems we spend time focusing about on the internet versus all the things that are affecting us, and probably at our core even us off.
26:45
It's gotta be very disproportionate.
26:48
And like, the reason it got the reaction it did is because we all like, no matter what it is that we're upset about or what we think needs to be different in the world or our opinions of things, or how we're raised or what our parents taught us,
26:59
I think we all feel a little bit out of control in this new society, we probably all feel like we're falling into this kinda like corporate power structure where we all are just robots, we're not allowed to be ourselves and be human almost, you know? - And there was enough people feeling that.
27:17
- And there was enough people feeling that.
27:19
I mean, people on the left feeling like the people in power are fucking over the working class people on the right, feeling the exact same with different words assigned to it.
27:30
The deep state, you know, fucking over middle America.
27:35
Whatever the narratives are.
27:36
And when enough of that is happening, again, with a corporate polite speak, there's something about politeness that's really dangerous.
27:47
I feel like there's a lot of politeness in the Soviet Union. - [Oliver] Yeah. Great example.
27:53
- Underneath that, it's like Chernobyl, which is this nuclear pipeline that melted down.
28:00
I feel like the bureaucracy needs politeness and civility and paperwork to function.
28:09
And then atrocities can happen underneath that.
28:13
So everybody, people in power with a smile on their face can just do horrific things and then give propaganda that look, you know, it's rainbows and sunshine and unicorns.
28:27
Yeah, so people that are rude, I mean, I'm starting to awaken into this a little bit.
28:31
Like you need a little like Tom Waits as like my town with a little drop of poison.
28:37
You need some, like some poison, some swearing, some meanness, some bullshit, like, intensity to shake up a system because when it sort of converged towards this polite bureaucracy, the atrocities can happen and hidden away.
28:58
- And what's probably the most terrifying to me is that that politeness is just theatrical.
29:03
Whereas it emulates the respect that we would normally give each other in society if we were healthy and functional.
29:10
- What was the process of writing that song?
29:13
I mean, it really spoke to the pain and anger of millions of people. So there's magic there. How many edits?
29:24
How many like lines did you write?
29:27
Were there any lines that you were like tormented by, haunted by come back?
29:30
Should I do it this way or this way or that?
29:33
- Do you have, I don't know, can you pull TikTok up on this?
29:37
So if you go to my page, so if you go down.
29:39
- There's some chickens go.
29:41
- Yeah, go down pre-Richmond.
29:43
You can see the original version of Richmond where I put it up.
29:46
- [Lex] This is so cool to see the evolution. - Man, there it is?
29:49
Okay, so that's if you play that.
29:52
- Have to man finish songs.
29:53
- Yeah, click that and play it.
29:56
♪ I'm selling my soul ♪ - 724. - Oh wow.
30:02
♪ No more time for bullshit ♪ ♪ So I can sit out here, waste my life away ♪ ♪ Drag back home, drink my troubles away ♪ - And if you read through this, it's so funny.
30:13
Everybody's like, "You're about to blow up."
30:15
♪ What the world's gotten to ♪ ♪ People like me, people like you ♪ - That's all I had. So I had just that.
30:25
- You should probably finish this one, might be real popular.
30:26
(laughs) That's a post from a few days later. - That was in July.
30:34
- Fuck, that's so inspiring. - So that's what I had. - That's so inspiring.
30:39
That's what like a couple weeks before you posted the final verse. - Well that's all I had.
30:46
Yeah, that's all I had written at that point.
30:47
Like that in my mind, that's the inspiration for the song was that little bit.
30:50
And I wrote that just 'cause I was on job sites all day and you know, going into like, all these just terrible places to work, like dealing with different contractors and stuff.
31:03
You were talking about wanting to go and talk to blue collar people and all this.
31:05
Like, that's what I did for work basically for eight years was build long-term relationships with people in blue collar.
31:11
I was in the industrial space.
31:13
So I would talk, sometimes, I'd talk to 20 different people a day, you know.
31:17
When you sit in a job site trailer and talk to a group of dudes like, and you're not there with some news camera, you're just there as like a random dude.
31:24
Like you hear so much about what really goes on behind the scenes of the structure of what builds this country and keeps it going.
31:32
And I think that's probably what it was.
31:35
It was how I felt, but also how I guess a lot of other like, you know, it was just, I don't know, it just seemed like the truth, so.
31:43
- So you jotted down even to the details like in a notebook, like those words?
31:49
- No, it's always just on my phone.
31:50
I would just keep recording, I would just keep...
31:53
You know, like, so, if you were to go back to TikTok and look at any of those original videos, so like the songs that ended up charting, let's say like the ones that were on there that charted with Richmond like, this, I've gotta get sober.
32:12
So literally- - That's a good song.
32:14
- So literally what I did was this video I took at my property, this is my carport where my camper was.
32:19
And I took this video, I went to some sketchy virus-ridden MP3 to WAV file or MP4 to WAV file transfer thing.
32:28
I would rip the audio off of this video, put this on TikTok and then put that on Distro Kid and that was the song.
32:35
But basically, this would've been the first time I played.
32:38
I've gotta get sober all the way through.
32:40
Like I would just keep writing it and working on it, writing it and record myself.
32:43
And maybe I would record myself 30 times over the period of like two months, you know what I mean?
32:48
- Oh, but when you say writing, you mean in your head not actually typed out or written?
32:52
- Right, it was just video.
32:54
It was mostly just videos.
32:55
- Over and over just videos.
32:56
- I just trying to figure out how to make it.
32:59
Yeah, but all these are like the audio file from all these videos is what ended up on Spotify and all that. You know what I mean?
33:07
- It's cool to see these videos before you blew up.
33:10
So this is a good song you're playing, so what is this?
33:13
♪ Well, the life we've been given ♪ Yeah, these were all.
33:17
♪ And the way we been living ♪ - "Don't sell your soul, brother.
33:20
This is the best music I've heard in a long time."
33:24
That's a comment before you blow up. - Yeah.
33:28
Yeah, I think I had about 10,000 followers or something.
33:31
♪ But I write mine on just gettin' by ♪ - What a fucking song, and that's a good one - And you gotta think like this was like, ♪ The hymn that sounds so sweet ♪ That was when I quit drink, you know what I mean? Like so that...
33:47
♪ But the troubles and the sin of the world that we're in ♪ ♪ Knock me back off my feet ♪ - So that's coming from your heart right there.
34:01
Just imagine ♪ I've gotta start livin' right ♪ - The thousands of people you help with that.
34:07
♪ I don't know how it's gonna go ♪ ♪ But it ain't gon' happen tonight ♪ ♪ So pour 'em down strong 'til I drown ♪ ♪ And if I wake up tomorrow ♪ ♪ When that sun comes back around ♪ ♪ I'll be wishin' I was sober ♪ It's so crazy how those cicadas and stuff come in.
34:37
Like I just felt like it was a God.
34:41
I don't know how to- - Yeah.
34:43
- Like that's just off my phone.
34:44
All that stuff's just there, you know.
34:45
♪ Well, the liquor and the bowl, they been savin' my soul ♪ ♪ From the pain that the world's put on me ♪ ♪ Lord, I know that upstairs, there's an old man who cares ♪ ♪ And one day, He'll set me free ♪ ♪ I'll go on a whim ♪ ♪ Start writin' a hymn ♪ - That's a genius of song. That's genius, brother. That's a genius.
35:15
- It's just crazy to think about.
35:20
- And what's this one right before? What is this? Oh yeah.
35:25
Yeah, so that's like the probably the...
35:29
- And this is a nice recording. Got it. - Yeah.
35:31
So this video got uploaded and then Draven from Radio WV would've gotten ahold of me in between this and that.
35:40
He watched this and was like, he said, "We gotta record that one."
35:45
And that like, so I didn't have it all, but I just had whatever was in that video is all I had written.
35:49
I think it was just the chorus in the first verse. Draven saw that video.
35:54
- [Lex] And said, "We gotta do this one."
35:55
- Reach out to me to record.
35:57
And he's like, "No, we gotta do that one."
35:59
And I was like, "Dude, that's all I got.
36:01
"- Tell me about that guy, Draven.
36:03
- He probably is like, he's probably like my best friend now.
36:08
We hit it off with this and we're like, we're like brothers now I guess, but- - Can you talk about like what he's doing for country, for music in general?
36:15
For country music, for discovering talent, for like- - Yeah.
36:17
- I mean, he's clearly sees something in people.
36:21
- Yeah, he's a little bit younger than I am and he wrote music and played and if you look up Draven Rife, he's gonna kill me for even saying this.
36:30
But he's got some pretty dude he can.
36:33
If he was like a pop singer, he can write the most catchy stuff ever. Let's go. Yeah.
36:41
- So click on like, I don't know, like. - Bye-bye. Yeah, there you go. All right. - That's him? - Yeah. - Where is this from? Five years ago.
36:58
♪ I was feeling on the way I was 10 years old, ♪ ♪ Walking underneath the blanket of West Virginia Snow ♪ ♪ Then walked right by no trespass sign ♪ ♪ Need the grass look green across property line.
37:09
♪ ♪ Bye bye ♪ ♪ Bye bye ♪ - You know, could probably do, if he does that.
37:16
(laughs) He could probably be real famous.
37:23
Well he's got a certain look - That dude, we'll sit there and he'll just like, we'll just be sitting there at like two in the morning and he'll just all of a sudden do this little thing and he's got like the most amazing first part of this like song.
37:33
Or we just started to co-write together like in the last few months.
37:36
So I'm really excited for that.
37:38
But if you go to his, this is really funny too, I'm sorry, Draven. I love you, man.
37:43
So go to videos and go to oldest first.
37:45
This is what's so awesome about Draven.
37:47
He was originally working for this lady who was trying to develop different types of haircare products, but he thought the market was too saturated so he was gonna get into beard oil.
37:57
So he created Radio WV as like a fake plug page for his burly boy beard brand he was working with.
38:04
So like if you look at yeah, like that very first video. - [Lex] Yeah, yeah.
38:09
- It's like it's got all his beard products.
38:12
There's multiple ones like that.
38:15
So he started it just to do this beard thing with and then like, I don't know, he just kind of felt called to like keep going with it and it just sort of naturally progressed from that.
38:23
- Yeah, that too is inspiring.
38:25
Like you start out one way and then you discover something real special.
38:29
I mean he's got an eye for how to bring out, I don't know what is like, both the audio side and the video side, how to bring out the bus in place.
38:38
- He says he just wants it to sound like the way he likes hearing it, which kinda makes sense, you know.
38:44
like it's kind of in the same way talking about when we were talking about setting the cameras up and a professional would tell you you needed three lights and you're like, "Well I think it would work with the," he's just kind of like, well it'll just work like this.
38:54
- And do it in a way where he likes it.
38:56
Yeah, just do it for yourself.
38:57
- He does it 'cause he loves it in shows.
39:00
- Yeah, you can see it in there.
39:02
And there's some good talent.
39:03
Like you were showing me this new Lady Gabriel. - Yeah, she's got it.
39:06
But not a lot of people would record her doing that song.
39:09
But he's like, I don't know, it just was different.
39:11
I just thought people ought to hear it.
39:12
But man, it was a blessing that he came along when he did.
39:15
It really changed both of our lives.
39:20
- We gotta talk about that.
39:21
So you posted the song "Rich Men North of Richmond" on August 8th, 2023.
39:27
- I remember I was at work that day when it went up, yeah.
39:30
- So it blew the fuck up, straight to number one on the charts.
39:34
Tens of millions of views and listens.
39:38
And a few days later on August 17th you made a post that I thought was pretty gangster, was beautiful and gangster.
39:47
So one of the things you said is it's been difficult as I browse through the 50,000 plus messages and emails I've received in the last week, the stories that have been shared, paint a brutally honest picture.
39:59
Suicide, addiction, unemployment, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, and the list goes on.
40:06
And then you went on to write people in the music industry, give them blank stares, when I brush off $8 million offers, I don't want six tour buses, 15 tractor trailers and a jet.
40:19
I don't want to play stadium shows.
40:20
I don't want to be in the spotlight.
40:23
I wrote the music I wrote 'cause I was suffering with mental health and depression.
40:28
These songs have connected with millions of people on such a deep level because they've been sung by someone feeling the words in the very moment. They were being sung.
40:39
No editing, no agent, no bullshit.
40:42
Just some idiot in his guitar.
40:44
The style of music that we should have never gotten away from in the first place.
40:48
So huge props for that, for walking away from lucrative-multimillion dollar record deals.
40:55
And I'm sure the money that was just coming your way, huge props.
40:59
You know, moments happen where, you know, the world tests you and integrity is what you do in those moments. So huge props for that.
41:12
What was your philosophy?
41:13
What was your thinking behind that?
41:15
- It was all those messages I got.
41:17
I mean you can see it in the comments sections of a lot of the videos after everything.
41:20
But people just like felt this spark like, like, wow, like maybe we actually have a chance to like maybe we actually do have some kind of power. You know.
41:30
Like those people put that song there, nobody else and like gave me the opportunity to make, even without signing anything, I was still able to make millions of dollars and have financial freedom.
41:39
And like, I felt like if I was gonna do anything like that, that I'd be betraying like I would be taking those people and almost betraying them somehow.
41:54
You know, like, I hate the big machine just like everybody else.
42:00
And the last thing I'd want to do is ever support it or be a part of it.
42:07
Like I wanna watch it crash and burn, you know? Like.
42:10
- See this is the really important thing is, whether it was betrayal or not, we'll never know, but you felt like that it was.
42:17
And to have the integrity to walk away from the bag of money when you felt that way, that's fucking epic.
42:28
- It was also, you gotta thank a couple months before this, like of course, you know, I had a wife and kids that I loved and I had a lot of really important things to live for, but I didn't have a whole lot to lose.
42:38
Like none of this was even really real.
42:41
Like I didn't care to lose this just as quick as I got it.
42:45
Like this didn't mean anything to me.
42:48
It just meant something to me that like, that I could do something for.
42:53
Like, you know, it's like even if I'm not smart enough to figure out how to fix some of my own problems in my life, the fact that I felt like I could help fix somebody else's like that meant hell of a lot more to me than any.
43:05
That's what I didn't wanna lose those people's trust or like feel, you know what I mean like? - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:12
- And so I've just tried to make every decision around like, as best as I can, like what I think the right thing is to do and who knows what the hell the right thing is to do?
43:20
But I just try to follow, you know, we all have that little voice in us like that. We all have some...
43:28
And I think sometimes, we mask and it's hard for us to listen to that little voice be whether, whether it's like, you know whether it's our gluttony or our lust or, you know, we numb ourselves with medications or with alcohol or we scroll on YouTube for four hours a night 'cause we don't wanna listen to our conscience, but there is this like very intelligent discerning thing inside of us that's able to tell us what's right and wrong.
43:55
And it's a spiritual thing I guess.
43:57
And I just try to listen to that when I can.
44:02
I don't know, I just still feel like I haven't done enough with it. - I think you did a lot. I think you did a lot.
44:08
I think you're an inspiration.
44:10
You've helped a huge number of people and you're also an inspiration to the other side of it, which is the artists and just the humans to have integrity.
44:18
I don't think people realize how much of a test of integrity fame, money, you know, power also is, you know, Rogan and I talk about this quite a bit.
44:34
We get to see, I mean Joe especially, but I've had a bit of the same, you get to see people become famous and you get to see how they deal with that. And it's not easy.
44:49
A lot of people will sell themselves a bit, sell the soul a bit, give away a bit of their integrity of the spirit that made them who they are.
44:58
You get caught up in the wave of it, you know?
45:00
And so to keep on holding onto that, that's a powerful thing.
45:06
That's a really- - Yeah, that's all I got though, you know?
45:09
When you lose that, what the hell are you like?
45:12
And you see it like, you see these celebrity people they fall off the, you know, they go off the deep end.
45:18
It's like, you have to have something in your life and to keep you centered and to keep you, you know, your whole perception of reality and like your just existence in reality as all contingent upon this sort of like this center that you exist in.
45:34
And if you don't have that, then you're just flying through through, I mean we're all just riding on this rock that's going who knows how fast?
45:41
- You said something I think to Jocko that I really liked.
45:47
Everything that has purpose behind it comes with risk.
45:51
So there in that moment, I mean, you're taking a hell of a risk. - I was terrified.
45:57
I talked about this a little bit with him too, but I was terrified to even put the song out.
46:00
Like I knew I was gonna be the subject of scrutiny and judgment and I knew people were gonna like, you know, I kinda knew all that was gonna happen.
46:08
I was like, going back to talking about crowds like, to stand in front of thousands of people and everybody be in some sense of unity.
46:17
Like a lot of times when I end the shows, I'll always end with this statement that just says, you know, no matter what, like no matter how you feel when you go online, you know, everyone feels so small and insignificant and powerless.
46:34
But I just say no matter how they make you feel online or when you turn on the TV or when you look at polling numbers or whatever, like when you just look at all this trash that we digest every day, like there will always be more of us than them and all that.
46:52
And but like to see the light in people's eyes when you say that, but the truth is like, and it's like, who is us and who is them?
47:00
And it's like us just represents humanity and all the things we talked about so far.
47:07
Like just, you know, the fire and the chaos and, but also like the love and just life.
47:15
Life is just such a crazy complicated, beautiful, disastrous thing.
47:19
And then them is like, it's the power structure.
47:23
It's that same terrible side of us that created things like the Soviet Union and is ultimately what's created like monster that we all live under today, which now doesn't just exist within the confines of the Soviet Union, but seems to almost be a global epidemic.
47:40
- And then that song became the rebel call against that, against the power structures that creates that.
47:48
- Yeah, it's like how much fire am I willing to play with?
47:51
'Cause I know at some point I am gonna get burned from it.
47:54
I just pray a lot that God, I don't have a lot of self-worth in myself anyway.
47:58
So I don't really care what they say or do to me or I don't care.
48:01
Like I don't even care if I die, whatever.
48:04
Just protect the people I love is all, that's all I ask of God.
48:09
I have this dream of just creating this parallel system that sits beside all these stupid systems that we live under that are all sort of engulfed in this thing that we talked about at the beginning. This type of structure.
48:21
You know, where none of us, where we're all just robots and it's like if we hate, you know, if we hate the way music is and all these artists are complaining about the way the venues are monopolizing, the ticket sales are monopolizing, let's just go find other places to play music, 'cause there's so many people hungry for music and places that don't ever get it.
48:40
And if you look at it, there's so many passionate people that are fighting all these different causes.
48:45
Like just in food, it's the word they use for more or less starvation.
48:50
It's a more polite, it's called food insecurity.
48:52
But if you look up just in Virginia, just where I live in Virginia in the rural areas, how much food insecurity there is and how many empty vacant farms there are.
49:02
It's like, this is an obvious problem that we should be on Twitter talking about nonstop.
49:06
Like this is like everyone has to eat, you know, it don't matter what you vote for or like what you look like or any of that crap.
49:16
So like, why are we living in a country where half of us are obese and eating shit food and don't know any better?
49:26
And then the other half of us don't have like, it's lack of leadership that's caused dysfunction.
49:31
And so if we're tired of that, then let's just fix it.
49:35
Like we don't need anybody's permission.
49:38
Like that's the whole beauty of what America is, we don't need some greasy-haired corporate schmuck to give us permission to go fix all these things that are wrong.
49:47
Let's just go do it and if they don't like it, fuck them, you know?
49:50
- In all domains of life, from food to the music industry honestly, to education, also to government itself, all of it.
50:02
And that, you know, your music is also just the soundtrack to that spirit that makes America great of just constantly trying to revitalize itself.
50:17
When the bullshit, piles up a little too high, there's that revolutionary spirit that says like, "We need to fix this shit."
50:24
- And that inspiration that created this country was from years of people living under tyranny.
50:28
Like, we forget the story of the people who really created this country.
50:32
Like, it's funny, one of the statements I made at the very beginning that got taken way outta context, but I wasn't in a position to like even begin to have a conversation about is I made this comment early on at one of the shows about how our diversity is a strength, but that term has been hijacked now to mean something a lot different than what it really means.
50:52
But it's like, think about how many different people came together just at the founding of this country.
50:56
Like people who spoke different languages, different cultures, religions, ways of thinking.
51:01
So many different people came together to even create this place now.
51:04
And like we've just forgotten about all that.
51:06
They didn't all come here because they wanted to ride on some miserable boat ride and risk their whole lives to go to live in some crazy jungle essentially that had like no infrastructure, no medicine.
51:18
Like they didn't come here for like some glorified camping trip.
51:21
It's because they were tired of like generations of being persecuted and living under tyranny and not being allowed to practice their, you know, it's not like they wanted freedom of religion and they didn't want separation of church and state because they were a bunch of goody two shoes and they love going to church every Sunday.
51:34
It's because they weren't allowed to believe in what they believed in because some king or some hierarchy told them they couldn't and they were just tired of it.
51:42
That's what we're losing now is like we've forgotten that we're those people.
51:45
Like the same structures that have plagued this country are, they're multinational corporations and it's just the ideology behind them and their structure is what the problem is.
51:55
- Yeah, I mean it's multinational corporations, it's nation states that are deeply corrupt and are authoritarian and ultimately abused power and yes, create elements of tyranny.
52:12
And from that the human spirit rises, like I said, with songs like the ones you write or at the founding in this country, you know, that's why all this diverse outcasts come together and write something as crazy as, "All men are created equal." What a gangster line.
52:36
I guess not an easy thing to take a lot of that stuff for granted now, but that's not an easy thing to come up with.
52:42
That's a really gutsy thing, to see the value in all people equally.
52:49
And of course, they also were suffering from delusion, you know, they didn't see Black people as equal.
52:58
They didn't see women as equal.
53:01
But even that first leap of like, "All men are created equal," that's like a gigantic fuck you to the past.
53:08
- Taking that leap forward really took a lot in a age, in a time when it probably sounded, and it's not like they just made a statement and put it on Twitter.
53:17
Like they like think about how much...
53:21
Just think about the insanity.
53:23
Like I can't even conceptualize the insanity of what took place from the time that, like, even from the Revolutionary War until now, to try to preserve that idea, you know?
53:31
So like, so much has happened and so much sacrifice has been made in just so many hours of labor and thought and intensity.
53:38
- Even in the 20th centuries, got two world wars and you know, especially in the second World War, the United States played a very crucial role.
53:47
And there was a lot of ideological like battle of ideas going on at that time.
53:53
Of the role of war and peace, of the role of the United States as the center place for the ideal of human freedom and human rights.
54:05
Yeah, we've continue to innovate.
54:07
So I'd love to get back to talking to blue collar people you mentioned.
54:12
Those are some of my favorite people.
54:14
So it was actually really cool to find out that for many years through your life, basically, the way you made a living is talking to blue collar people and getting their story.
54:25
So I'm traveling across the world for a bit, but of course, the world I love the most and I'm most curious about is the different subcultures and towns of the United States.
54:38
So I took a road trip across the US in my early 20s for several months, and that was like a transformative experience for me.
54:47
And that's something, one of the luxuries I have is to have the freedom to do whatever the hell I want now.
54:56
And so I want to take a road trip across the United States for several months.
55:01
And one of the things I wanted to do is to just to talk to people in small towns in Middle America.
55:10
I don't know what words to put on it, but to talk to the very people that you talked about, you know, construction workers, plumbers, waitresses, oil rig workers, just people that do something real, people that are real, that don't make much money, that struggle, but have as you talked about, have like a richness to them that's not often revealed, that's not often talked about.
55:44
So maybe can you speak to that to your time with blue collar folk?
55:49
- When I got all those messages, we were talking about earlier in this, like, so many of them, and even now even since I even like in the last couple days I've gotten some where they start with, "Hey, I'm a nobody," but like, that's how a lot of those start, you know, like the nobodies of the world if you wanna call them.
56:08
Like, it's frustrating that the people who literally have built and preserve and maintain the structure of society that we all comfortably live in.
56:24
Those people have the least amount of representation.
56:27
They're ignored just because of the way the social hierarchy exists.
56:31
But some of the most dimwitted, irrelevant, terrible people are put here and are idolized and spotlighted, and they're all over television and they're all over the internet.
56:43
And we act like they're kings and queens and like that they're royalty.
56:48
And then all these people who do jobs that most of us will be too, either wouldn't have the even the ability to do.
57:00
Like, how many people are gonna go underwater and weld.
57:03
But if we didn't have underwater welders, like one of my best friends whose name is also Jocko, funny enough, the dude worked 70, 80 hours every week.
57:11
He's on the Chesapeake Bay tunnel job now.
57:14
But the dude's gotten on heights that I couldn't get on.
57:18
He's went underground, places I wouldn't go.
57:21
And nobody will ever know.
57:23
Like nobody even knows those people's stories or what they went through or like the kinda lives they lived in.
57:28
And they're like the people who create the fabric of society and even the waitresses and the waiters and like all these factory jobs that I worked in, all those people, like you talk about the craziest place I ever worked and the craziest people I ever met was this little place called Perfect Air in Marion, North Carolina.
57:45
And it was this commercial air conditioning factory, which is, I think closed now, but they didn't pay very well.
57:50
And so everyone they hired was either people that had criminal backgrounds who couldn't get jobs elsewhere, or idiots who dropped outta high school and couldn't work elsewhere like me.
57:59
And so I was 18 years old working in this place with people who are mostly in their 50s and 60s.
58:03
But you wanna talk about being exposed to just a whole nother world of people.
58:08
Like, and just the stories and just those people are far more interesting than many of the people that we consider to be celebrities.
58:15
Like most people who are celebrities are just pretty boring and airheaded and don't really even know what real life is about.
58:21
They're pretty unrelatable to the rest of the world.
58:23
And so it would be really cool.
58:24
I mean, that's the whole reason that I wanna go out and do these shows in places that haven't had music in them in 10 years because those people, like that is America to me.
58:31
You know, how many people in Pittsburgh have been an hour outside of Pittsburgh and even in Virginia, if you lived in Northern Virginia and you drive 2 1/2 hours Southwest, you're in a whole nother planet.
58:40
Like the people, the accents, the culture.
58:44
And so I feel driven in the same way.
58:46
Like I would love to find a way to try to bridge that cultural gap, to make those people relevant because they are like some of the most, and like, and it's funny because we emulate a lot of those people.
58:59
Like, you know, modern country music is a bunch of people emulating those people, you know?
59:05
- And there's also like, I love people that have a skill and become masters of that skill also.
59:13
So that element is also there, even if it's like, insanely difficult work, like being a minor.
59:19
Like there's a skill to that.
59:20
There's stories there, like what it takes to do that.
59:24
It's what I mean, some of my favorite humans are engineers and all they do is solve really hard problems and they develop, I mean, it's a pain in the ass job.
59:33
Anything in the factories is extremely difficult, but you learn so much about what it takes to solve intricate like, nuanced problems in the physical world.
59:44
So coal mining, oil rigs, like you mentioned welding, that's a fascinating line of work.
59:51
- And those are trades that are in many cases dying because they aren't popular in culture anymore.
59:57
Everything from a agricultural to plumbing and electrical, it's like, those are all areas I think if you were to go out and talk to some of those people and shed light on it, you could change the entire landscape in America of how it's perceived and like, and make it cool, you know?
1:00:15
- Yeah, so thank you what you're doing on that front.
1:00:18
I wanna say I wrote it down, please, if you know people that will be willing to talk, reach out to me.
1:00:24
A good way to do that is lexfridman. com/contact.
1:00:29
- This was another one of the things early on that I had that idea about and I thought was getting done.
1:00:34
I've gotta go back and try to figure out is doing prison shows and doing rehab shows and all that, but I am really intrigued with like going into those places and trying to immerse myself in just the mental state that those people are in.
1:00:52
And like, it's not talked about a whole lot, but.
1:00:56
- Also people who get out, ex-convicts.
1:00:59
I mean, that's a hard life.
1:01:02
That's just a hard life to try to reintegrate back into society. - Yeah.
1:01:07
And a lot of those people at Perfect Air that I worked with, they almost all were in some form of legal trouble.
1:01:12
Like, there was a lady that worked on the assembly line, beside me named Denise.
1:01:17
And her and her husband had been manufacturing methamphetamine and he took the fall for most of it.
1:01:22
She only had to go on probation, he was still in prison.
1:01:25
But man, like Denise was a very sweet lady and like, aside from the meth manufacturing, she was like, great, you know?
1:01:33
And just such a character, like in such a good way.
1:01:35
And so it's like, yeah, just. - Denise, lexfridman. com/contact. Let's talk. I mean, yeah.
1:01:43
You know, like both sort of the plumbers and the coal miners and Denise with the old meth heads.
1:01:51
I mean, they're walking the line of like, you know, surviving is hard.
1:01:58
So you have to do a real hard job.
1:02:02
And then you also have to live life, which is in general hard.
1:02:07
You know, divorce kids, people die.
1:02:10
You lose like the medical issues and that that can destroy you completely.
1:02:15
All of a sudden something happens, you can't afford it, then the insurance system destroys people, all of that.
1:02:23
So you have to somehow navigate life while working your ass off in a real hard job.
1:02:28
And those people, they have stories, that's a real pain.
1:02:33
And from that pain, from that anger, that's where "Rich Men North of Richmond," you could just feel their pain come through with that song and with your other work.
1:02:45
So that like, there is a landscape of suffering.
1:02:50
- Yeah, it doesn't have to be that.
1:02:52
We don't all have to be that decentralized either.
1:02:55
Like if there is that much commonality among people, which I do believe there is like just innately in suffering.
1:03:04
Yeah, like there's a guy in West Virginia that I talked to that he's got a piece of property beside of mine that he was interested in selling.
1:03:11
But the reason he's got this dream of opening, like putting some cabins there and renting them out for people to come Airbnb, he works at Lowe's full-time, but his son's like 19 and he is got this heart surgery he's gotta have.
1:03:25
And so he's trying to sell the place for that. And just that guy.
1:03:29
And all you'd ever see him as is the guy that works at Lowe's, like pulling lumber or whatever.
1:03:34
But he's got this very insanely complex life he's trying to manage.
1:03:38
He doesn't wanna lose his son.
1:03:39
Like he's just gonna sell everything.
1:03:40
And like at one point in time, maybe the church served that role of like, when people really fell off track and they didn't have a support system and they were like on this tiny bow out in the ocean, they figured out some kind of way to rally it.
1:03:51
In my mind, that's like the dream of all this.
1:03:53
If I die and there's any like, legacy left or anything done, it's like finding a way to take all the people that fill that role and organizing them and empowering them and protecting them.
1:04:04
It's rebuilding the community, but in a real way, not in like this fairytale bullshit.
1:04:09
Everybody's gonna love each other and we're all just gonna be one big happy family.
1:04:12
Like, everybody's still gonna get mad and hate each other in certain ways. And that's good.
1:04:16
Like we need those tornadoes, like you said, we need people off and angry and we need people to feel like they can be angry and open about things that are wrong.
1:04:24
Like people should be able to speak their mind.
1:04:26
And we shouldn't all just kiss each other's ass.
1:04:28
And we shouldn't all just pretend to be overly polite and say, "Hey Debbie, you have a good weekend."
1:04:33
Like you said, like, we need all this controversy and this turmoil and like, we need the hell of what that side that the internet brings out in people.
1:04:40
But it just needs to be in real life and it needs to be in a way where we're all like, we all are at least chasing the same common goal, which is probably that we don't wanna starve and we wanna have decent health and we wanna be able to like, provide a decent life for our kids.
1:04:53
Or at least we just wanna live a decent life.
1:04:56
Like, I think somehow, that fixes what you describe like the people who fall in despair and are isolated in it.
1:05:08
It's a terrifying world to live in. It's that principle.
1:05:12
Again, this is, I need a phone a friend thing where we can just keep calling Jordan for all these things.
1:05:15
But like he explains, there's this principle in the bible about the more you have, the more you'll receive and the less you have, the less you'll receive kind of a thing.
1:05:25
And it's just a universal law in society where it seems like the lower you get to the bottom, it's almost like the, like the less resources you have available and the less friends you have.
1:05:35
And it is like, the further you go snowballs into where it's like people just hit rock bottom and then what?
1:05:43
It's like when you get outta prison, what are you supposed to do?
1:05:45
Or when you're a veteran with mental health, like what are you supposed to do?
1:05:49
Like in my mind, that's what the church is supposed to be there for is like, but obviously, it doesn't fill that role anymore.
1:05:56
- To some people, at least Religion does a little bit.
1:06:01
It's at least a foundation of community, a foundation of hope for people and when they're really struggling. - Yeah.
1:06:12
- You got thousands of messages, like you talked about from people you've gotten to talk to thousands of people about their pain through your work, through your music.
1:06:21
You've been an inspiration to those people to find a way out of the pain.
1:06:26
Can you tell the full story of your own lowest point?
1:06:31
Before all of this, before the music, before you blew up.
1:06:39
Can you take me through the story of the depression, the drinking and just the roughest times in your life?
1:06:48
- Sometimes, it's not even, you know, it's funny, but it's almost not even where you're at in life.
1:06:54
It's where you perceive yourself at in life and what your goals are moving forward.
1:06:58
And I think like, you know, I dropped outta high school at 17, basically ran away from home.
1:07:06
I have always had this authority problem and so I just didn't wanna listen to my parents.
1:07:11
I didn't wanna go to college, I just wanted to go move into the mountains.
1:07:15
I was running away from responsibility, I guess is what I was doing, you know?
1:07:19
And so got this girl pregnant, had my first kid when I was 18, or just about to turn 19.
1:07:25
And like I said, I'm working in the air conditioning factory with a bunch of convicted felons.
1:07:31
And so from there, everything was just reactionary.
1:07:33
I never really had a plan.
1:07:34
I would jump from job to job just like most everybody else.
1:07:37
I don't know, I just got to a point where I guess I just quit believing in myself and I knew that I wasn't doing, I wasn't feeling my purpose and I wasn't being the best version of myself I could be.
1:07:48
And so the alternative to like facing yourself in the mirror and accepting that I'm not a person.
1:07:55
I've just let myself fall.
1:07:58
You know, it's like, it's so hard to accept when you've had that fall that it's just easier just to get drunk and, you know, just do the bare minimum you can to keep everything sort of kind of moving along.
1:08:10
But you don't really care if you live or die.
1:08:13
You don't really care about much anything.
1:08:15
Your whole, you know, I don't know, life is just so beautiful when you're a child.
1:08:18
You're so imaginative and exploratory and you're learning all these things and you just can't wait to be an adult because you're just gonna go out and do all these incredible, you know, and then- - You face the reality of it.
1:08:30
- Yeah, and the pressure and the fear of failure.
1:08:32
Like I think maybe even my own fear of failure is what drove is what drove me into.
1:08:37
But yeah, and you think negatively about yourself for so many days and weeks and months and like, you don't even have a real self-awareness of like what you're doing or how destructive you've become, but you always have that discernment in you, that like, that conscious, you know, that little voice in your spirit that is letting you know you're messing up.
1:09:00
You know, I was almost like, I was wrestling with myself, you know?
1:09:05
And so, I don't know, I just got to a point where it just like, yeah, just a very overwhelming sense of numbness.
1:09:18
Like nothing that mattered before really matters anymore.
1:09:24
Like I guess that's probably to me, the definition of depression is when all the things you love and care about are just meaningless and you really can't find meaning or purpose or excitement in anything.
1:09:37
You know, like I think especially with men that commit suicide, it's a prolonged period of that.
1:09:46
It's not like they just wake up one day and they have a bad day and they kill themselves.
1:09:51
It's like, you self-reflect negatively about yourself and your life and you don't do the things that you're supposed to do every day for a long enough period of time.
1:09:59
And it's like pretty soon you've built this whole mountain of mismanaged neglected stuff, for lack of a better word, like this mountain that you have to climb back up in order to fix all these things that you should have been doing all along.
1:10:19
And then on the other side of it's like, well, I could just die. Like that seems a lot.
1:10:24
I think from a man's perspective maybe.
1:10:27
The friends that I've had that I've lost, it seems like a lot of times, you just think you ne you'd never see it coming.
1:10:33
You know, like, I don't know, maybe that's a general thing.
1:10:36
It seems like a lot of times men mask that better and you don't pick up on it as much, but I think it's like you just dig yourself into a point to where it's like you have a mountain of responsibility in front of you that you haven't faced, that you don't know how to face and you haven't been able to do so for a long time, but there's this really easy detour and it's just, you know, putting your big toe on the trigger.
1:11:01
And it's like, which one of those are, I don't know, like they're both seem, but at that point, your perception of reality is so distorted that like you don't all the things that would normally compel you to move along like your like love and joy and like, you know, your drive to be that, none of that really, it's not there for you to even contemplate, if that makes sense.
1:11:27
It's like that part's, it is almost like, at least for a little while, invisible.
1:11:31
And all you see is fear and responsibility and just like I said, I just envision it like a mountain that you don't really know if you're even able to climb.
1:11:42
And then the other option is just, so, yeah, I think that's probably where a lot of people go and that's probably where I was just like, you know, - Yeah, I mean there is the, it's not just responsibilities, it's the immensity of it, the mountain.
1:12:01
And I think you're accurately describing how it happens, which is gradually, - Yeah.
1:12:06
- Seeing yourself in a negative light over time slowly suffocates you.
1:12:12
And then the burden of the responsibility that piles up.
1:12:18
And unfortunately, of course, one of the ways out is to pull the trigger.
1:12:25
And the other way out is the Jordan Peterson, back to Jordan, sort of one gradual step at a time. Like, make your bed.
1:12:34
It's like start climbing out, like the responsibilities before you one at a time every single day, just climbing out and have faith that it will work out.
1:12:46
- That was what was so powerful for me about just beginning to open my mind back up to reading just a little bit of stuff, like a little bit of stuff from the New Testament that Jesus said and some different perspectives and teachings.
1:12:57
But like, you know, an apostle would be in prison, like, basically being tortured and facing death, but like, just overjoyed in writing about, talking about, it's all about your perspective of things, like I said, like that's why I never could understand why, you know, like celebrities or professional.
1:13:15
I mean, giving one example of many, like a Kurt Cobain type scenario where you have a guy that's just immensely talented, just will always be loved by plenty of people.
1:13:25
Like I never could understand why that guy.
1:13:28
- There's a ocean of quiet suffering in a lot of, and I think it is disproportionately in men, in a lot of men, and they hide it well.
1:13:39
- That's why blue collar workers have such a high suicide rate in all too.
1:13:43
And why it is so important to talk to those people.
1:13:46
- Yeah, and you could see it in the eyes and there is a lot of pain there.
1:13:53
- Without like trying to open up too many doors, I think that's probably the best way I would describe it is just a series of really, just a series of negligent decisions and also just misperceptions, you know, like, I think this was an Andrew Huberman thing where he talks about medications and how it's a lot more likely for somebody to keep their dog on their medication schedule but not themselves.
1:14:20
You know, you love your dog and your dog like is just this great little thing and you don't see the flaws and the faults and the sin and the disgust in your dog that you do yourself.
1:14:32
So it's much more likely for people to make sure their dog has their medication every day.
1:14:36
But like, there's this alarming statistic with just the amount of people that don't even fill their prescriptions they need filled or take care of themselves the way they do.
1:14:44
And then that also, like over time, you know, like if you quick taking care of yourself and you're not in good health and you're not in a good routine.
1:14:55
You're not like a long series of doing enough of those things like you do, it's easy for you to just think that your self-worth is zero.
1:15:02
Because if you're not even willing to like, have basic hygiene and eat decent food and try to take care of yourself, it's like, how on earth are you gonna go face all these things that you need to face to get your life better if you don't even care enough to do that?
1:15:22
It's a long tragic road to get to that point, I think, at least in my case.
1:15:26
The idea that there was something bigger than me that loved me even despite I had all these flaws and problems and that I was just such a wretched person.
1:15:35
That's what, at least in my situation, that's what I think helped put, you know, more than anything.
1:15:41
Like I said, that's certainly where the motivation to quit.
1:15:43
Once I quit the drinking, it helped a lot 'cause even though it was difficult, I was able to actually be able to be honest with myself and reflect on a lot of things that were...
1:15:53
And you know, you gotta think, like I said, we watched the, I mean it was like with, of course in my case, it was a little unfair of an example 'cause within a month, all this stuff had happened, like after I quit.
1:16:01
But you know, I see it in my friends that have quit and have tried to turn things around and it is the most beautiful thing in the world to see somebody like come to life again after being in one of those, you're able to like sort of like escape this shell of all those terrible things.
1:16:21
And even if you are still in a bad position and you got 30 grand worth of credit card debt and you're working some shit job and your car doesn't start half the time and like, you know, your girlfriend left you for some other dude.
1:16:32
And like, don't matter what it is.
1:16:33
Like if at least that little glimmer of hope that like that faith that there is a chance, there's something greater, like that'll push people.
1:16:43
You can push them out side with that.
1:16:45
You know, like you can do anything with that.
1:16:47
And I think it is important to have a good support structure like when you get to that point.
1:16:53
I don't think you sh I don't think anybody should have to face that stuff by themselves.
1:16:58
And there's plenty of other people out there that are in the same position.
1:17:01
And I think that's, again, I think that's why it's so important for us to try to get reconnected on a personal level and not just through digital communication.
1:17:10
All we see of each other online is the good stuff.
1:17:14
Very rarely are people on posting on Facebook talking about, you know, how could you even?
1:17:19
It's like all you see is the best of people, but I don't think we realize that we're all going through a lot of the same things anyway, you know, the low points and stuff.
1:17:26
- Guess what happens when you either lose your job or can't quite figure out a good job and you're not making that much money or you're basically broke and you have a girlfriend that's not happy about you being broke, she's gonna leave you.
1:17:39
If it's a wife, that could face divorce and like the breakups and divorce can break a lot of people even when they're doing well.
1:17:49
And now when they're not doing well, that's a rough one.
1:17:53
And that basically your support system for a lot of people is the relationship, is the wife.
1:17:58
And so like, that's taken the support system from underneath you and.
1:18:03
- I've had good friends of mine, I've seen get in destructive relationships and like, they'll start to date a girl and then like within a year, they're just like a shell of what they were.
1:18:12
Because sometimes, I do think you have to be careful with like your self-validation and the way you perceive yourself and making sure that it's you giving yourself that and not somebody else.
1:18:23
'Cause I do think too, it's like, yeah, like, you know, if you can't even keep a woman around to love you right, like, how are you supposed to love yourself?
1:18:34
It's easy to think about that.
1:18:36
Like I've seen a lot of men get wrecked in bad relationships and stuff too. It's tough, you know?
1:18:41
- Yeah, ultimately, I think maybe dark to say, but there is a base layer at which we're alone in this world.
1:18:50
Like, you need to be strong by yourself, first and foremost.
1:18:56
Sometimes, there'll be times in life where everybody leaves you.
1:19:00
The wife leaves you, the job leaves you.
1:19:03
And for some people, even people you thought are friends will back stab you.
1:19:08
And even then you have to have the strength to find your footing again.
1:19:13
Like that ultimately comes from you, right?
1:19:17
- I mean, man, of course, like I said, in all the experiences I've been through, I'd be a fool to deny it.
1:19:21
But like, I do think there is God there, that's always there.
1:19:25
But you certainly can self-isolate yourself too, even from that, - If you can find faith in yourself.
1:19:32
I've seen it do wonderful things for human beings.
1:19:35
You and God, faith in something bigger than you, that can give strength to a lot of people, but allowing yourself to derive strength solely from other people can be a dangerous thing.
1:19:52
'Cause people are complicated and they can betray.
1:19:58
Just like they can fill your life with love, they could also destroy you.
1:20:01
That's also the beautiful thing about life. - [Oliver] Yeah, it is.
1:20:05
- You make yourself vulnerable to other people you form deep relationships, that means they can also destroy you.
1:20:13
So that's life That's what makes this whole thing.
1:20:19
And then you write really great heartbreak songs. - (laughs) Yeah.
1:20:23
- You know, there's something valuable about people fucking you over and hardship and all that kind of stuff.
1:20:31
- Even the best of us have terrible parts of us.
1:20:34
Like we are all flawed inherently because we're human.
1:20:38
And so, there'll never be another Garden of Eden on Earth.
1:20:46
Like figuratively, where we all just live harmoniously and everything's great and happy and wonderful.
1:20:51
But it's those basic principles that you talk about, like love and our and those relationships and those connections that we have that make it all.
1:20:58
'Cause think about it, I mean like in a lot of cases, it's like what even?
1:21:01
That's the position you get in when you get so depressed and you get so low, it's like, what's the point in even doing all this?
1:21:06
Like, it is just for anyone.
1:21:09
It is just so crazy, overly complicated and exhausting to live, isn't it?
1:21:13
Like even in this modern society where we have all these wonderful little conveniences and we can just have food delivered right to our door if we want, and all this kind of crap.
1:21:21
It's like people are still like more depressed now than they've ever been.
1:21:26
And like, all the mental anxiety and all the mental health stuff is just probably just as prevalent as it's ever been.
1:21:32
People talk about money not making you happy and you know, it's easy when you're broke to think, "Man, if I had some money," and of course, financial freedom is what you're really looking for.
1:21:44
Not like an abundance of wealth, but the things that we talk about that make life worth living aren't things that you can buy.
1:21:50
They are things that you obtain through relationships and love and life.
1:21:55
And so, it is a just an infinitely complex and crazy thing to think about.
1:22:02
But it's like that human component of us is what's so important to our long-term existence.
1:22:12
Like our ability to have connection with each other.
1:22:16
And the joy we find in that, the purpose we find in that, it's not anything that's replaceable with anything, you know?
1:22:26
- Yeah, I've seen that with just seeing the effects of war on the people.
1:22:31
And basically, war strips away everything.
1:22:35
You lose your home, you lose everything.
1:22:39
And you get to see what's actually really important.
1:22:42
That's the other people in your life. Friends, family.
1:22:47
It's almost cliche to say, but it's the people you love in your life that make up the essence of what makes life worth living.
1:23:00
It's not the homes, the material possessions, even the job and whatever else. The humans. Yeah. Yeah.
1:23:10
It's important to remember.
1:23:11
A lot of us, especially in the United States, under capital system, are chasing money.
1:23:17
It's important like to remember what you're doing it all for.
1:23:21
I gotta talk to you about your writing process.
1:23:24
You've written just a bunch of really incredible songs.
1:23:29
You say you're not a good musician, which is hilarious, - Dude, so I have like zero self-confidence about any of, I mean just about anything.
1:23:37
But when I say that I'm not being funny, like, I'm like.
1:23:41
- You get nervous when you like get on stage? - Oh yeah.
1:23:48
Yeah, like, I can think about shows coming up and my hands will sweat thinking about them.
1:23:52
- Yeah, you told me that you like haven't really played the songs for like a couple months, like old songs- - [Oliver] Since September. - Since September.
1:24:01
- Well dude, like, think about like, you know, I'm not going just sit around and play.
1:24:07
I've gotta get sober for fun.
1:24:09
And like, you know, so you feel.
1:24:12
- You feel the songs when you play them. - Yeah.
1:24:16
- Yeah, man, that's rough. That's rough.
1:24:19
- A lot of musicians talk about that kind of thing though, right?
1:24:22
Like about this, I don't know.
1:24:24
I've heard about that with people like about hating to play songs 'cause of that side of it, but. - Oh yeah.
1:24:32
I've become close friends with the Dan Reynolds who's the lead singer for Imagine Dragons.
1:24:36
And he says every time he performs a song, I mean, he has songs that have depression in them and all that kind of stuff.
1:24:42
And he says like, the only real way to do it is to feel it. You can't just fake it.
1:24:48
You have to like be in it.
1:24:50
You have to like really feel the song.
1:24:53
As if you're singing it, as if you're writing it for the first time.
1:24:56
So as a performer, he says that that's his duty he has to the audience.
1:25:03
But then that takes a toll. That's not easy to do.
1:25:07
Especially with the songs you write.
1:25:11
I mean, there's a lot of darkness there in your songs.
1:25:14
- Yeah, and I do have some lighter hearted ones.
1:25:20
You know, I mean, the thing is, is like I've only put out, I'm a little funny about like really like, God, I don't know how many songs I have written that I will probably never do anything with.
1:25:32
Like, I mean, probably at least 20 or 30 of them that are just like, they're just not, I just don't know why I don't wanna put them out, but just.
1:25:37
- What does it look like?
1:25:39
What do you have like a notebook with ideas or do you mean you have like literal videos of half-baked songs?
1:25:46
- Yeah, I've got my old phone.
1:25:48
Like even just that old phone that I recorded all the stuff for TikTok and all, it's got loads of like little, just like the way that Richmond one was where it was like in the bathroom facing, and I had like that.
1:25:59
You know, that's all that, even that one I showed you on there, it had been sitting on my phone probably a couple months before it.
1:26:04
That's why I said I have too many unfinished songs.
1:26:06
It's exactly what I meant.
1:26:07
I've got all these little snippets of things like a little blip here or there.
1:26:11
But the writing process is, well, it's a lot different than I thought most people write 'cause there's a lot of people that do these writing rooms and stuff or you know, these co-writes where they'll have people sit down> And they like sit on the couch and smoke a joint and they're like, all right, let's write this song.
1:26:29
And they just like start plugging away.
1:26:32
And to me, that's like, I can't do that.
1:26:39
A lot of times, the songs come when I'm not prepared for them. - You like to be alone?
1:26:46
- Well, alone in my head.
1:26:48
I could be anywhere in it.
1:26:51
You know, some of them I'll just be in the shower and they'll just like, and I'm like scramble because the thing is like, hmm, it's a certain part of your brain I guess that creates that stuff or picks it up or does whatever.
1:27:02
But they come, just they come and they go just as quick as they come.
1:27:06
It's like when you wake up.
1:27:07
It's exactly like when you wake up, you've had this crazy vivid dream in your head.
1:27:12
And you wake up and it's all right there and then you stop thinking about it for like half a second and then it all goes away and you'll never remember it again.
1:27:19
You know, like you can't remember your dreams like that is exactly like that.
1:27:22
It's like, it'll be there. It's like perfect. Like it's all right.
1:27:25
It's almost like given to you, like just perfect, like parts of it or the whole thing or whatever.
1:27:30
And then you get into this flow state to where you just like, it's all there in front of you and you just figure it all out.
1:27:35
It's like somehow you've like unlocked this little part of your brain that you don't even really know how to get to, but you just get to and it's all there and you figure it out.
1:27:43
But man, if you don't get it, it's gone.
1:27:45
Like you'll never get it again.
1:27:47
Like you'll never even be able to replicate that song ever again.
1:27:50
It's like, it'll just go away.
1:27:51
And typically, it's like, it's only maybe the first half of the first verse is what I'll get.
1:27:57
Or it'll be like the chorus line I'll get, and then I'll build the rest of the song around that. If that makes sense. I guess.
1:28:03
- Well the words or the music or the melody, like what pops into your head?
1:28:07
- the emotion, I guess the words.
1:28:09
Sometimes it's a phrase like, like one thing I will do is like, especially out in the country, people say the craziest things.
1:28:20
And so sometimes, I'll like jot down a little bit of some, like I will sometimes on my phone take a little note if somebody says something real crazy that I've never heard before.
1:28:27
And then maybe one day, it'll just pop in my head like, oh, you know, I don't know. It's very random though.
1:28:32
Like, I don't sit and just try to write songs.
1:28:37
That's why I haven't just been dumping out.
1:28:39
Even though I have been writing a lot of songs, I haven't just been like dumping out all this crazy music. I don't wanna force it.
1:28:44
I don't wanna do truck beer girl songs or like, you know, I don't wanna force songs.
1:28:47
- I don't wanna like, do you have any truck beer girl songs?
1:28:52
Because that would be an interesting- - Yeah, I've got this silly one about this guy in West Virginia that he's the most laid back.
1:29:01
'Cause I always get in my head and go over analytical about stuff and get real serious sometimes about things.
1:29:06
And he's like, "Buddy, you just gotta take a drag off this thing."
1:29:10
And you know, he was the one, he'd always like peer pressure me into taking a hit off a joint or something and like just tried to cheer and he just didn't take life so seriously.
1:29:18
So I've written this song about, it's called Dr.
1:29:19
Dan and it's about, you know, he's a doctor but he's not like a conventional doctor.
1:29:24
That's a silly one that I'll put outs.
1:29:27
So I do have some silly ones like that. - [Lex] That's great.
1:29:29
- I have a couple funny ones that I'll never, ever, ever probably play to the public, but I did.
1:29:34
I played him at the mothership only 'cause nobody has their phones in there.
1:29:39
But when after right after we did Rogan.
1:29:44
Somehow, I got connected with Tom Segura right after Rogan and we went over to the mothership and I got to meet him.
1:29:49
And I love Adam Eget you know, he, he was on the thing with Norm Macdonald is how I got introduced to him, that show Norm McDonald had.
1:29:56
But he's an awesome dude.
1:29:58
And so we ended up at the mothership, I think it was the evening after the Rogan podcast.
1:30:03
And Tom's like, "Well, they've never had live music in here."
1:30:09
He's like, "You could be the first one."
1:30:10
And I was like, "Whatever."
1:30:12
And so we only had one guitar and I had my guitarist Joey with me.
1:30:18
So Ron White was there, it was Tom Sugera and then Ron White that night.
1:30:22
And Ron took Joey in his car, drove him across town to his house and grabbed another guitar and came back.
1:30:31
And we got up there and we did like two really silly songs.
1:30:34
And then Richmond between Tom's set and Ron's set.
1:30:38
And I was like, again, that was one of those moments in my life where I was like, what? Like what? - Yeah. - What is this?
1:30:45
Like what is this crazy reality I'm in?
1:30:46
But I do have some funny.
1:30:48
'Cause when I wasn't playing the open mics, you know, well, like, you know, Brian that you met, a lot of my guitar playing was spent at places like his house and we were all heavy drinkers and we were just sitting around at a party playing or whatever, you know.
1:31:00
And so I definitely liked the silly stuff too, but I was really in my head when we were talking about being low and what I was adjust people to do if they're in that point.
1:31:09
But if I was just to like, not to flip this, but it just popped in my head, but probably what I would tell anybody to do if they're like suicidal and thinking about like, if they're to that point is just to go find somewhere outside, like in nature and go.
1:31:26
I kinda missed this step when we were talking about things, but like selling my house and buying that property and putting a camper on it and trying to go into this whole off-grid thing, really. Like, I don't know.
1:31:36
It does a lot of good for you being reconnected to nature.
1:31:40
'cause we are a part of it, but.
1:31:42
- Oh yeah, I went to the jungle for that reason.
1:31:46
Being out of nature in every way, it's just beautiful.
1:31:49
I saw you got some, maybe that's what I need to do is get some goats.
1:31:53
- I got two I can give you. - You got? I have more questions.
1:31:57
Why are you giving them so easily?
1:32:00
- Are there issues they need to know about?
1:32:01
- Well, they're goats, yeah.
1:32:03
- There's no free lunch, man. How many you got goats?
1:32:07
You got all kinds of animals.
1:32:07
so what's the story of you out in the woods?
1:32:12
What are you doing out there?
1:32:14
- No con no, I'm just kidding.
1:32:15
Just trying to escape this dystopian nightmare that we're all living under.
1:32:18
Like yeah, just, it was just a form of escapism I guess.
1:32:22
But you know, well, yeah, I think in such a short period of time.
1:32:25
My grandfather grew up like, you know, they were in a survival estate, like trying to make enough money to pay the tax on their land, growing tobacco.
1:32:35
And then here I am, like in this digital world two generations later and I'm just like, just felt called to try to figure out, figure all that out and how to get back into that.
1:32:47
There's such a purity to, man, if you raise an animal and kill it and eat it.
1:32:53
Like, and I'm not talking about like, like Ted Nugent style, but just like, you know, raising meat birds and pigs and stuff and having the ability to put those in the freezer and cook them for dinner.
1:33:04
They taste so much better.
1:33:06
But it's just, I don't know how to describe it, but it just brings me joy, being able to grow stuff and even just flowers and everything else.
1:33:15
Just watching stuff that's alive like that is just such a, you know, what we're doing now is I've bought this permaculture farm that hadn't been operational in like six or seven years and they did a lot of herbs, they had a big orchard, blueberries, you know.
1:33:31
But my dream there is to create this space that's like the optimal place for humans to fix their mind.
1:33:38
So like what's the animals and the food that I can have there and the trees that I can plant and the certain types of wildlife that I can bring in and attract.
1:33:47
Like the noises and the sounds and the smells that are optimal for a human to be in order to like fix whatever it is.
1:33:54
You know, like I had the opportunity to meet Robert Kennedy Jr. early on with all this.
1:33:59
And you know, he actually came out to my property and all and I think the idea is that we're gonna launch this kind of like healing center thing out there.
1:34:08
Once they get through all the mess, they got their hands full a little bit right now with things.
1:34:13
But whether I go that route or not, it's like, that's my goal is to basically create a place that people can go and like, and fix their mind and find the optimal thing.
1:34:22
You know, we've got laying birds and meat birds, so we get our eggs and meat and then we've done pigs and sheep and goats.
1:34:30
And then I'm gonna get cattle in the spring, so we'll start doing like Wagyu and Angus and playing around with, and I wanna get some funny stuff too.
1:34:39
Like large animals have a lot of, you know, there's all these like large animal therapies out there for mental health, like with vets and stuff.
1:34:47
It's something really relaxing and rewarding about being in that space.
1:34:53
- What do you find out there in nature that you can't find anywhere else?
1:34:59
You can't find in the quote "civilized world"?
1:35:04
- Well, everything in civilization seems so, like everything we've talked about it seems so, like, there's such a level of despair and unorganization and chaos and just like.
1:35:16
And all these like terrible parts of life that seem like so unstructured and just so uncertain.
1:35:23
But in nature, everything is certain, everything has a system.
1:35:26
Like even on the microbial level of soil, there's this like intricate system.
1:35:30
And you know, soil fixes it, like the bacteria fixes the soil and like, and you can grow certain types of plants to restore certain types of nutrients.
1:35:41
And then that can grow certain types of trees and then that can bring in certain types of birds.
1:35:44
And it's like this whole big, nature is just this whole big beautiful system.
1:35:48
You know, like earth is just such an intricate complex system that is structured.
1:35:53
And although there is chaos, there's literal tornadoes, you know, like the metaphor we were using earlier, like there are literal tornadoes in nature and other things, but there's a piece about observing the structure there.
1:36:05
And to me, it helps remind and restore my faith that there is something bigger than me that like, yeah.
1:36:15
And there's a spiritual side to it that I don't know that I can really correctly articulate, but man, sitting out in the woods with some creek flowing by you and just sitting in stillness like, where you don't hear anything.
1:36:27
There's no traffic from a road.
1:36:31
You're just there in stillness and just watching the earth do its thing, just.
1:36:36
- I've gotten a chance to spend a day and a night alone in deep in the Amazon jungle.
1:36:42
- Mm, that's like my dream, man.
1:36:44
- You basically take the woods in the creek and the quiet, let's put that like a three on a scale of one to 10, the Amazon joke is like an 11.
1:36:54
Because you're not just listening to the creek, you're listening to like a lot of different species of animal having sex or trying to kill each other.
1:37:04
And you're just like birds, monkeys, just everything.
1:37:09
And the floor full of insects. - Yeah.
1:37:14
- Bigger kinds of ants, murdering smaller kinds of ants.
1:37:16
It's an orchestra of insects, but it's quiet in the sense that there's no machinery.
1:37:22
The really dark thing about the Amazon rainforest that sometimes depending on where you are, you'll sometimes hear in a distance, the sound of a chainsaw you'll hear like.
1:37:34
and it pierces the day because like, there's just no machinery anywhere around.
1:37:41
But once you hear, you know, it is like this undeniable symbol of what human civilization does to nature.
1:37:54
- It pains me seeing woods getting knocked down and residential subdivisions taking their place like this.
1:38:01
Like the monkey part of my brain wants to just go burn it all down.
1:38:05
Like it's just like not good.
1:38:06
Like, I don't know, I just instinctually observe it as being not good.
1:38:10
And I don't know exactly how to describe it, but I'm with you.
1:38:14
Like I said, that's why I felt so compelled.
1:38:17
I mean we had, I had this little house that I had maybe a little bit of equity in, and it was in 2019 and the housing market was up and I was like, I sold our little house and got that I was able to find 92 acres for like 1,100 an acre.
1:38:30
And so I still had to finance it, but it was at least like barely within my...
1:38:36
And so that's what we did.
1:38:38
You know, I was paying 600 a month on the land and I bought a little camper for $750 off this hunt club in Waverly, Virginia and drug it up there. And that's what we had.
1:38:49
And like went and bought, I got a little Kubota tractor for 0% financing and was like cutting, like this property was a mile off the road.
1:38:58
So I had to cut basically like recut in an old logging road and stuff.
1:39:01
And you wanna talk about putting a strain on your marriage, that'll do it buddy.
1:39:07
Selling your modest little rancher and doing that.
1:39:09
But man, that's when I really started to live.
1:39:13
And I think that was like the beginning point of the restoration of me, you know.
1:39:18
And I feel bad that a lot of people just don't even know what that's like to be on a farm or be out in nature.
1:39:24
And I can't imagine just living in a suburb or a city your whole life and never getting to experience that.
1:39:29
You know, it's good that we have all this technology is great and like the science and the innovation is important.
1:39:34
And even the fact that you can go on YouTube and look up how to do almost anything is important.
1:39:40
It's just that there isn't a clear definitive line between what's beneficial and educational and what's predatory and harmful.
1:39:48
And so it's like, it happens to me all the time, but I could go on YouTube and look up how to change the brake shoes on my truck or something.
1:39:56
And if I click on a short of somebody doing it, Like, I automatically go to the next video and I may be three or four videos deep before I catch.
1:40:04
I'm watching like, you know, some lady throw a pie at somebody and then pretty soon I'm like, wait, I'm changing my break.
1:40:11
That's the only issue with it.
1:40:12
- And you're just doom scrolling and it does something to your mind that just completely takes the humanity away. - Yeah. - It's really horrible.
1:40:22
Like that dopamine thing does something in my mind that I hate, which really is the opposite of nature.
1:40:30
Like the feeling, I remember being out in nature and not just a hike.
1:40:34
A hike is good, but like for prolonged periods of time, several days away from the internet, away from all that. What is that?
1:40:41
I don't know what that is, but I don't like what X, Twitter are doing.
1:40:47
I don't like what Instagram is doing, whatever that is.
1:40:49
I don't think that's good for the soul. I'm not sure. - Yeah.
1:40:53
it's emulating things that we need to be healthy humans, but it's just like feeding it visually and audibly to us.
1:41:01
But it's not giving us the...
1:41:03
It's giving us the instant gratification of it, but it's not giving us the long-term pleasure or fulfillment of it.
1:41:09
Like I said, like, and the beauty is we're in this weird period in time, like it's a breath of time where we are able to conceptualize and observe what life was like in that transition point. This got us up till now.
1:41:25
And we also have, because in order for all this to continue to evolve, like even with AI, like it needs us more than we need it right now, still.
1:41:35
For a very short period of time.
1:41:36
But we have access to nearly all the information that the world has theoretically, but we also still have the perception and the memory of what life was like before.
1:41:47
And so this is like a very short window of time, like a breath of time where I think we can find a way to like incorporate this into normal life.
1:41:58
But I think like if that breath leaves us, like, I don't know, I truly believe it is irreversible and I think like, and that's just gonna be the end of us.
1:42:07
And it could take two or three more generations to get to that point.
1:42:10
But like I think like why don't we find people that are way smarter than me?
1:42:17
And look at all the things that trend on social media, like the videos that everybody watches.
1:42:22
Like, I don't know what it is, if it's wood splitting and plumbing and blacksmithing and doing something with, like, let's find all the things that people are attracted to online that they obviously are like interested in.
1:42:34
And just figure out a way to have them in real life for people to immerse themselves in.
1:42:38
- Yeah, I mean it's a transitionary state and one of the responsibilities I take very serious 'cause I agree with you is I tried to pierce the bubble that is the San Francisco, that is the Silicon Valley, that is the people that build these technologies, they often live a bit in a bubble. - Yeah.
1:42:54
- That said, the people that criticize tech folks also live in a bubble.
1:42:59
And to sort of, first of all, piercing bubbles in general is good for people to get along, to understand each other because people that say all technology is evil.
1:43:08
Unfortunately, technology, even if that's true, which I don't think it is, it's coming. It's going to be built.
1:43:18
And so you have to figure out how to do it in a way that preserves our humanity, that doesn't drag us into this black hole of like, just maximizing engagement, maximizing this dopamine thing where instead of reading Dostoevsky which I should be doing, I'm looking at some girl doing, shaking her ass on Instagram, and then feeling horrible about myself five minutes later.
1:43:40
That at scale, is what seems to be happening.
1:43:43
And so like reminding ourselves that this is not the way to steer human civilization to progress, to flourishing.
1:43:51
- The problem is I think we're wasting a lot of our bandwidth.
1:43:55
Like we only have so many minutes in the day to even use our brains.
1:43:59
And our brains can only do, but so much in a day anyway.
1:44:02
And when we're wasting any of it on just that, it's like, I see it in my unprofessional opinion as the world is becoming just a little more in the last decade or two, as the world becomes a little more dreary and dark and more problems happen and city streets become more littered and jobs are like, all these kind of problems that we all argue about all the time as they become more prevalent.
1:44:29
It's like the internet and just the visuals of the internet become so much more immersive.
1:44:34
And video games are so much more, everything's so much better here.
1:44:37
Everything's improving at lightning speed and technology, and it's degrading in society and in the real world.
1:44:44
And somehow, there's gotta be a way to find a balance there.
1:44:47
But right now, it seems like as technology becomes more immersive and addictive and interactive, you know, like the way these algorithms like feed us exactly what we want, and there's so much psychology and just so much research that goes into making them as addictive as possible.
1:45:00
It's like, the real world kind of sucks.
1:45:03
Like, you know, cities that were beautiful and thriving are now falling apart.
1:45:09
And have all kinds of problems that are being unaddressed and lack of leader.
1:45:11
It's like, there's gotta be some kind of way, and so it's easy for us to feel more and more inclined to escape into the digital realm because the digital realm is becoming more fun, while real life is becoming less fun.
1:45:23
And there's gotta be some kind of way to balance between the two. I'm with you.
1:45:26
I'm not against technology at all.
1:45:28
I think evil most certainly existed long before there were computers.
1:45:32
Like, and in even more treacherous ways, like now we have the ability to do.
1:45:37
Like I said, we're in a very temporary state right now in 2025 where we have access, where the general public has access to basically all the information there is, and artificial intelligence and just immense, and the ability that like a guy can just set a bunch of cameras up and start doing podcasts.
1:45:54
And have just even just the fact that your platform could be created is like immensely powerful.
1:46:00
It probably never existed in world history up until now, but we also still have, the problem is, is if we just keep going without being careful about, about losing the real world aspect of it, is that like, at some point, we're just gonna get so lost and so immersed in this space, we're not even gonna know what we're missing out on.
1:46:20
You know, all there's gonna be is girls on Instagram.
1:46:22
Like all there's gonna be is that.
1:46:23
- Yeah, I've been trying to figure it all out.
1:46:25
I just did a super long podcast with Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games who created Fortnite.
1:46:33
He created Unreal Engine, a lot of interesting video games, like revolutionary video games.
1:46:38
So I don't know if you know, but Fortnite is this gigantic video game where people go into an online world and they shoot stuff.
1:46:46
It's fun It's not like Call of Duty intense militaristic, like raw, real kind of shooting.
1:46:53
It's more fun shooting at each other.
1:46:55
But, you know, at first, I was skeptical, like, is that a good way to hang out with friends?
1:47:01
But then I got to do it with people that I'm actually friends with in physical reality.
1:47:07
And you get to hear each other's voice and you just talk and talk shit about each other together.
1:47:14
It's basically a phone call, honestly, with some visuals.
1:47:19
It's not about the visuals, it's about the phone call.
1:47:21
And it just makes it a little more convenient to connect regularly.
1:47:24
But I think you do need to remember that all of that only works if you're consistently returning to physical reality.
1:47:32
You know, in this case, like taking the quote unquote "guy trip," not the Brokeback Mountain style, but just friends, you know, just friends trip out in nature together, like dudes on a hunting trip or just fishing or just hanging out in physical reality together.
1:47:51
Like we should not forget the importance of that.
1:47:54
- You talked earlier about loneliness, I think that got brought up at some point, but I do think that's a problem that's caused a lot of our symptoms, is that we are all like very lonely.
1:48:04
Even though we all seem to be so well connected digitally, we are all so lonely.
1:48:10
You gotta think, I mean, modern warfare too was a big thing.
1:48:12
I was supposed to have been in class of 2010, so you can think, like, when I was in whatever grade, eighth grade or whatever, Call of Duty was like the thing.
1:48:21
You know, I've certainly like, trust me, I'm not saying that I'm right in this space of digital immersion with anybody else.
1:48:28
Like I've been there and seen it but I've wasted who knows how many hundreds of hours on Modern Warfare too.
1:48:35
And I really built some great friendships from it, you know.
1:48:41
There's a place for all that stuff.
1:48:43
It's just like, we have this innate responsibility to like, again, it just goes back to talking about our founding fathers and the way this country was created and the importance and like the importance of what it did for the world. You know?
1:49:03
And my my understanding is that it was the first time ever that people got together and agreed that, like you said, every man was equal because they were created in the image of God.
1:49:12
They had unalienable rights that no government could take away from him.
1:49:15
And that's really important.
1:49:16
Like there won't be Fortnite if we don't worry about that.
1:49:20
And honestly, like, just the collapsing in our structure with the mental health, with our youth and the suicide rates, with our blue collar workers and all these kind of things we've touched and talked about, like those are all just things.
1:49:31
We just need more time together in real life to fix those problems.
1:49:34
Those are just things, like I said, I make the joke, but like there's never been one argument that I've, there's never been one dispute with my wife that I've been able to figure out how to fix through a text message or like, it takes being in person with people and like having human connection to fix any problem and to heal anything, you know? And so it's difficult.
1:49:55
It's like, it's not anybody's fault that we're like, that we're not even able to really get to know each other and understand each other through the internet.
1:50:02
Like, we almost have to be together in person to even just get each other's point of view and perspectives on things and, you know, - Yeah.
1:50:09
Fuck the division that the internet creates, honestly, like the left and the right, it's been kind of a nightmare for me just to watch.
1:50:17
'Cause I see the very simple reality that we're in it together and that there's a lot more commonality between people.
1:50:23
It seems cliche to say, but it's like now that used to be said more than ever.
1:50:30
'Cause when you look on X it feels like everybody's divided, but we're not.
1:50:34
- Well, and people are gonna always gonna think differently too.
1:50:37
Like just in our structure and the way we, you know, again, it goes back to that Jordan Peterson lecture about, I think in Maps of Meaning where he talks about people who think more conservatively or more liberally about things like it's been applied to politics, but it's based more in psychology than anything.
1:50:53
Some people are gonna think more inside the box and some people are gonna think more outside the box.
1:50:59
But we have to have both in order to have a healthy society, like.
1:51:03
- Oh, and also, the thing that bothers me, your song, "Rich Men North of Richmond," a lot of people have pretty even split people on the left and the right in terms of friends of mine.
1:51:16
And sadly, they've drifted towards the extremes a bit.
1:51:22
Those on the left definitely have developed a case of Trump derangement syndrome.
1:51:27
Those on the right seem to think that every person on the left is a kinda radical leftist.
1:51:33
It's like hilarious to listen to people talk.
1:51:33
(laughs) It's like everybody's lost their mind, it feels like.
1:51:41
But also on top of that, when people on the right see Trump as the savior, as this figure who could do no wrong, who's going to restore freedom in America and, you know, continue, you can do a full list of really positive things.
1:51:58
And to me, he's yet another rich man north of Richmond, Biden, Trump, it's all the same thing.
1:52:06
You know, some might be able to do more good than others, but ultimately, they're in positions of power and power corrupts in those positions.
1:52:16
Often forget about the everyday person, the working class.
1:52:21
And they leave them behind, ultimately serve the people that are close to them and sometimes serve themselves to maintain power, to grow their power.
1:52:30
I think the good thing you can say about them, and I could say that about both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, is that they really love their family.
1:52:42
I could say that one of the things that I love about both people is that they genuinely love their family.
1:52:50
And like, it was always heartwarming to me to see how much Joe Biden loves his family.
1:52:57
And honestly, like just do anything for his family.
1:53:00
And the same is true for Trump, and that just reminds you that they're human beings.
1:53:04
And yeah, all that to say is like, we need to see the humanity in each of us, and to some degree, always distrust that people in power, - The power that people have only exists because we allow it, whether willingly or just through our own negligence.
1:53:20
But I think that's the important thing is like, like I said, there's always more of us than there will be of them.
1:53:26
There's always more nobodies than there ever will be. People at the top.
1:53:30
We just have to figure out what to do with that.
1:53:34
And I think this is, like I said, a short window of time to where we can still figure that out, you know?
1:53:40
- I gotta ask you about something before I forget.
1:53:43
I think I saw on Instagram you talked about a three-legged cat. Is that a real thing? - Yeah.
1:53:48
- What's the story behind the three-legged cat?
1:53:49
The reason I want to ask you that, first of all, I wanna hear this story, and second of all, I wanna read to you one of my favorite Bukowski poems afterwards. I bought another cat.
1:53:58
All right, what's the story?
1:54:00
- I had this cat lady neighbor, who's a real sweet lady, but older lady lives in a trail, single wide trailer.
1:54:10
Has probably got, I don't know, 30 or 40 cats that she feeds at her house. - Nice.
1:54:16
- It was a rainy, Saturday morning was pouring down rain.
1:54:19
It was gonna be like, it was like eight o'clock in the morning on Saturday.
1:54:21
It was gonna be a great day.
1:54:23
And then I hear this lady yelling, "There's this cat stuck in my car," and she's all freaking out and don't know what to do.
1:54:29
And like I said, my wife's a veterinary technician or whatever, so she's got a little bit more sense about animals than any of us.
1:54:34
But we go over there and the lady's tried to start her car and there's this kitten that was up under the hood, and she started the car and the cat basically, it basically almost ripped its whole front leg off already.
1:54:48
There was just a little bit still attached, like some tendon or whatever, but the leg was like wrapped up under the water pump, like the pull of the water pump. Knocked the bell off.
1:54:57
There was no way to save this leg on this guy.
1:55:00
But the cat was like pinned upside down.
1:55:03
And so we ended up grabbing, we asked the lady if she had like a knife in the house, so she gave us this like, terrible-looking knife, but it's all that we had, you know, I was like, we were trying to get this done.
1:55:14
So yeah, my wife was the one that did it, but we like got the rest of the stuff cut and got the cat out.
1:55:20
And I don't know, I just like, to spend, like have, I was like over a grand, we spent, like getting this cat's, like getting it properly sutured or whatever to where the cat could have a healthy recovery and all.
1:55:36
But I'm one of those type of people, like, I couldn't just let this little, I'm not gonna go, they were gonna just go put the cat down or whatever.
1:55:43
The lady, you know, so yeah, I named her Hop, so that's my little cat and it hops around but it was one of those things where, yeah, I don't know, great example with animals though.
1:55:56
I guess it's the same way with people.
1:55:57
I just always see the best and I just couldn't.
1:55:59
- Yeah, I mean that's one of the most amazing things about humans.
1:56:03
It's irrational to spend that much money on this cat, right?
1:56:08
Because there's so many other cats that are suffering and dying and so on.
1:56:12
But that's what makes humans really special.
1:56:14
We see that the person or the creature suffering in front of us and the we're willing to move mountains to save that person. Like it's irrational.
1:56:26
Maybe it doesn't make sense because the allocation of money and effort might not be correct, whatever.
1:56:33
We just don't give a shit.
1:56:35
- The reason that we're willing to do it for a cat.
1:56:36
Like I said, it's just like the thing with the dogs about giving the dogs their medication but not yourself.
1:56:41
So we see all the flaws and all the problems and all the disagreements and all the anger we have with each other.
1:56:46
Just like you said, your friends on the right and the left and stuff.
1:56:50
And like, we could show that kind of compassion.
1:56:51
And we do, I mean, humanity does from time to time, show that kind of compass.
1:56:55
But we could show that kind of like, just undeserved, just love, you know, to each other too.
1:57:03
Like, and love is like, it's funny, you know, you talked about how both of those presidents, you could say they at least love their family, but love is like, I think everyone's capable of love.
1:57:16
It's probably the most powerful thing there is.
1:57:19
Even beyond hate, I think is, you know, like, but it is crazy with animal.
1:57:23
So it comes out of us so easily with animals because to us, they're just these innocent little lives.
1:57:29
We don't have anything against them, you know, They don't talk, they don't have political views.
1:57:37
They're just little creatures.
1:57:40
But the reality is we're all just creatures like that, you know, - We do that with human children.
1:57:45
But we don't do it enough with adults who are also kinds of children.
1:57:52
We're still fucking lost in this world.
1:57:55
So I gotta read you this. - Nice.
1:57:57
- It's gotta be one of my favorite poems.
1:58:00
It's called "The History of One Tough Motherfucker" by Charles Bukowski.
1:58:04
And people should go look at videos.
1:58:06
Well, there's videos of Bukowski doing interviews with a cat by his side.
1:58:12
And that's the cat he's talking about. All right. It goes like this.
1:58:16
"He came to the door one night, wet, thin, beaten and terrorized.
1:58:21
A white cross-eyed tailless cat.
1:58:24
I took him in and fed him and he stayed.
1:58:28
Grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway and ran him over.
1:58:33
I took what was left to a vet who said, 'Not much chance. Give him these pills. His backbone is crushed.
1:58:40
But it was crushed before and somehow mended.
1:58:43
'If he lives, he'll never walk. Look at these x-rays. He's been shot.
1:58:48
Look here, the pellets are still there.
1:58:50
Also, he once had a tail. Somebody cut it off.' I took the cat back.
1:58:57
It was a hot summer, one of the hottest in decades.
1:59:00
I put him on the bathroom floor, gave him water and pills.
1:59:04
He wouldn't eat, he wouldn't touch the water.
1:59:07
I dipped my finger into it and wet his mouth and I talked to him. I didn't go anywhere.
1:59:12
I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to him and gently touched him.
1:59:16
And he looked back at me with those pale, blue, crossed eyes.
1:59:20
And as the days went by, he made his first move dragging himself forward by his front legs.
1:59:27
The rear ones wouldn't work.
1:59:29
He made it to the litter box, crawled over and in.
1:59:33
It was like the trumpet of possible victory blowing in that bathroom and into the city. I related to that cat.
1:59:40
I had it bad, not that bad, but bad enough.
1:59:44
One morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and just looked at me.
1:59:50
'You can make it,' I said to him.
1:59:53
He kept trying, getting up, falling down.
1:59:56
Finally, he walked a few steps.
1:59:59
He was like a drunk, the rear legs just didn't want to do it. And he fell again. Rested, then got up. You know the rest.
2:00:08
Now he's better than ever.
2:00:10
Cross-eyed, almost toothless but the grace is back.
2:00:13
And that look in his eyes never left.
2:00:16
And now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed shot, runover de-tailed cat.
2:00:28
And I say, 'Look, look at this.'
2:00:31
But they don't understand.
2:00:33
They say something like, 'You say you've been influenced by Celine.'
2:00:37
No, I hold the cat up influenced by what happens by things like this, by this, by this.
2:00:45
I shake the cat, hold him up in the smoky and drunken light. He's relaxed, he knows.
2:00:53
It's then that the interviews end.
2:00:57
Although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures later and there I am and there's the cat and we're photographed together.
2:01:05
He too knows it's bullshit but that somehow, it all helps.'
2:01:11
So when you posted about the- - I love that. - The three-legged cat. There you go.
2:01:18
And I think of you, your music and your life story in the same way.
2:01:21
It's just been through some shit, just like Bukowski.
2:01:25
Neither of you two have been through what that cat's been through, but you know. That's kind of life.
2:01:31
That's what it's all about.
2:01:34
I was wondering if you could play a couple songs. - Sure, - Yeah.
2:01:38
Cool, you wanna take a break or no? - No, I'm good.
2:01:41
We might take a break just free to get this figured out.
2:01:47
- [Lex] Bathroom break real quick. - Of course, yeah.
2:01:51
- [Lex] Where is the guitar?
2:01:52
Like no, like positionally, - I think, yeah, I think this will be fine. - [Lex] So ghetto.
2:02:04
- Call Draven and be like, who?
2:02:11
- Well, I guess I'll do, if I was gonna do anything on here from the older songs that was related bull to everything we've talked about, it'd probably be "I Want To Go Home." - Sounds good.
2:02:24
("I Want To Go Home") ♪ If it wasn't for my old dogs and the good Lord ♪ ♪ They'd have me strung up in the psych ward ♪ ♪ 'Cause every day livin' in this new world ♪ ♪ Is one too many days to me ♪ ♪ Son, we're on the brink of the next World War ♪ ♪ And I don't think nobody's prayin' no more ♪ ♪ And I ain't sayin' I know it for sure ♪
2:03:11
♪ I'm just down on my knees ♪ ♪ Beggin', Lord, take me home ♪ ♪ I wanna go home ♪ ♪ I don't know which road to go ♪ ♪ It's been so long ♪ ♪ I just know I didn't used to wake up feelin' this way ♪ ♪ Cussin' myself every damn day ♪ ♪ People have really gone and lost their way ♪ ♪ They all just do what the TV say ♪ ♪ I wanna go home ♪
2:04:07
♪ Four generations farmin' the ground ♪ ♪ Grandson sells it to a man out of town ♪ ♪ And two weeks later, the trees go down ♪ ♪ Only got concrete growin' around ♪ ♪ And I wanna go home ♪ ♪ I wanna go home ♪ ♪ I don't know which road to go ♪ ♪ It's been so long ♪ ♪ I just know I didn't used to wake up feelin' this way ♪ ♪ Cussin' myself every damn day ♪
2:04:49
♪ There's always some kinda bill to pay ♪ ♪ People just doin' what the rich men say ♪ ♪ I wanna go home ♪ ♪ If it wasn't for my old dogs and the good Lord ♪ ♪ They'd have me strung up in the psych ward ♪ - That's probably one of the first, I don't know, it's not the first song I wrote, but one of them. - What a song, man. - What a song, man. What a song. What a song.
2:05:50
What's the story of that guitar?
2:05:52
- Well, the guy who made this like save my butt 'cause everything blew up and I was playing that little Gretsch resonator that's in all the original videos.
2:05:59
And my wife had got me that off of Amazon I think or something for like three or 400 bucks.
2:06:06
It's like just a entry level, like import little Gretsch.
2:06:10
And the pickup never would work right in it.
2:06:11
So this string would wouldn't work when you plugged it in.
2:06:15
So here we are, everything happens all at once and we're trying to do these shows and like, you know, I think the biggest one I did, so basically what I ended up having to do was I bought one of these suction cup rigs that sticks right here in the mic.
2:06:29
Goes down under here to pick that string up.
2:06:31
And I played like, we played like, I think the biggest show I did with it was like 10,000 people, but it was enough to where I couldn't be doing a $300 guitar with a rigged up thing on it anymore.
2:06:42
It just wasn't gonna work.
2:06:44
So this guy reached out and Gretsch wouldn't help me with my, like, you know, there's no way to really get ahold of them 'cause they're such a big company.
2:06:52
I finally did get ahold of Diane Gretsch and she's like really nice.
2:06:56
And so it's nothing personal against Gretsch, it's just at the time I couldn't get ahold of them.
2:07:01
I figured I would've been able to 'cause like everywhere sold out of that Gretsch model when it song blew up, you know, like, it was a real pop but that couldn't get a hold of them.
2:07:09
So this guy, beard guitar, Paul Beard and Marilyn, he reached out, fixed my Gretsch and then gave me one of these and made it but it's all handmade and all. It's like.
2:07:22
Yeah, you can like whack somebody over the head with it pretty good.
2:07:24
- Yeah, it's nice and heavy.
2:07:25
- [Oliver] But yeah, he makes them all by hand. - Nice.
2:07:29
- [Oliver] Little family-owned place and.
2:07:31
- I know nothing about resonated guitars.
2:07:33
Is that like, do you play regular acoustic?
2:07:38
- Yeah, it's just basically a regular acoustic, it's just a full step down is the only difference.
2:07:41
I've just got it tuned all the way down. - Is that it?
2:07:43
Because there's also like the...
2:07:46
There's whole vibe to it. - Oh, oh yeah.
2:07:47
Well the body's different.
2:07:48
So you can see it's got like it's got like a solid, you know, instead of it being a hollow body, like an acoustic, it's got that, it almost looks like a hubcap, that black play and they.
2:07:56
- Call the chord that's all the same.
2:07:58
It's just the stuff down.
2:08:00
- Yeah, it's just the same.
2:08:01
Yeah, I wouldn't be smart enough to play anything special.
2:08:02
Like it's just a regular old guitar.
2:08:04
- I don't know, there's a different vibe to it.
2:08:06
- Yeah, well I like that. - Somehow cooler.
2:08:08
- Well I'm real fond of like the older music, like, so like where all my family's from.
2:08:16
So my dad was adopted, so I don't have any fa like Lunsford is not really even a real last name to me.
2:08:23
It was just my grandparents that adopted my dad.
2:08:25
So all of my family's Ingle, is like I-N-G-L-E.
2:08:30
That's all my mom's side of my family.
2:08:33
And they're all from this place about 20 miles from where like the Carter family was from.
2:08:40
So all that old Virginia like kind of bluegrass folk music and stuff.
2:08:45
And so I was just always attracted to that.
2:08:48
And so, I like the resonator a full step down 'cause to me, it kind of gives it that old sound like, you know, a lot of the instruments back then had like bad dull strings and they were older and they were out of tune a little bit and stuff.
2:09:02
I listened to a lot of that type of music.
2:09:03
So I like the strings being a little out of tune and dull and not everything and just that.
2:09:09
Yeah, that's why I was so attracted to it.
2:09:11
Plus like some of the old blues players, like, you know, playing the Dobro and stuff.
2:09:18
But that's why I wanted to get the resonator 'cause of that old, I mean that's even why like, you know, I had to use my grandpa's name as a alias, but that Oliver Anthony music is really supposed to represent like, old music from like 1930s Virginia or something.
2:09:30
Like, you know, like it's kind of got that type of feel to it.
2:09:35
Or at least in its core, you know.
2:09:37
- It feels like from another time.
2:09:39
But it also feels timeless.
2:09:42
- It's also that my music catalog is so limited, like of what I listen to that a lot of what's in my head.
2:09:47
Like, 'cause you think about when you're writing songs and like coming up with chord progressions and stuff, whether you realize it or not, it's all being influenced off of other songs.
2:09:55
So when you only have a lot of older music and like some a little bit of metal and stuff in there, it's like, there's not really a whole lot.
2:10:02
It's like that, you know, it's kind of gonna sound that way I guess just an anyway 'cause that's what's in your head already, but.
2:10:08
So you're gonna go out there a little bit this year.
2:10:13
What are some things you're looking forward to?
2:10:16
You gonna travel a bit, you're gonna play a bit.
2:10:19
- The idea is to go to a town, like, let's just use Iowa as an example.
2:10:24
Instead of the big City in Iowa playing at the venue where everybody books, let's find a farm field, 45 minutes outside of that big city, figure out the ingress, egress, the security, find a good promoter, like a show organizer basically that has experience to where it's still professional and it's done correctly, But establish like a new venue space.
2:10:47
That can't be put under contract by a monopoly that any artist can go play.
2:10:51
Like without, like if all these musicians are sick of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, then let's just start playing in fields and on main streets and set these venues up and establish them correctly and professionally to where they exist as their own space.
2:11:05
And then imagine the economic impact that would provide to a town that otherwise would never like, and imagine, you wanna talk about trying to give blue collar people like some hope or give them some relatability or do anything for them.
2:11:18
Like bring a big band to their town that they would otherwise have to drive an hour and a half somewhere to see and couldn't even afford the tickets to start with.
2:11:25
Like my tour last year, pretty much every show we did that was mine had a $25 ticket option and everybody scoffed at that.
2:11:32
And I was basically like made fun of for that by people in the professional space.
2:11:37
Even people I was working with, they just thought it was so stupid. But you know what?
2:11:41
There were people at my shows that came up and the kids were wearing hand me down clothes and like you could tell they didn't have any money and they said it meant a lot to them that they could come and that there was a $25 option.
2:11:51
And so, and I'll continue to do these shows like this to where any band that wants to come play the show, all their expenses are covered.
2:12:00
And I'm sure there's some kind of tax write off component to them for them.
2:12:03
But basically, they can come in, do the show, help bring in a crowd, like I'm taking the risk, setting the venue up and establishing it.
2:12:10
The venue will be owned or managed by either the town or the farm or whatever.
2:12:14
But it'll be in a nonprofit and then that space will always exist for people to rent.
2:12:20
And the idea is just like, man, imagine if I did, if I could do 20 of these a year, even that's all I can get done.
2:12:27
Like that's 20 places that will always have music and will always have a center where people can go like and build this sense of community.
2:12:34
We talked about like, it's almost like a sanctuary if you wanna call it that.
2:12:38
But it's just a space that can't be perverted by corporate America and just a place where people can go and like do all these things that we wanna do.
2:12:48
What are you excited for this year?
2:12:50
Obviously you're gonna travel overseas and sounds like you got some other cool stuff you're gonna do.
2:12:55
- Yeah, I'm gonna see some world leaders hopefully not end up in prison anywhere.
2:13:02
Part of that, honestly, I'm excited, you know, like India to see the same humans but in very different parts of the world.
2:13:12
I'm not a travel guy but I love seeing humans that there's like a lot of us humans all over the place and they're very different and they have funny accents and just funny way of being, you know, so I'm excited to take it all in 'cause I fundamentally love people. - Yeah, man.
2:13:32
Like I would definitely say, if you're ever over towards Virginia or West Virginia, either one there like, yeah, it'd be cool to spend a couple days out in the woods or a day out in the woods.
2:13:42
I'm really new to the whole psilocybin thing, but I have tried a few smaller doses of it actually to help with being up on stage and all.
2:13:51
And it's an interesting thing, but. - It's great.
2:13:54
- Yeah, the dog, definitely the dogs in the woods part, I got you on that.
2:13:59
- Oh, I would love to join in.
2:14:00
I mean, I've taken mushrooms a few times and listen, I usually just love everything anyway.
2:14:05
But with mushrooms you just love it a little bit more.
2:14:08
Like especially out of nature, when I'm look out in nature, I'm just in awe of how incredibly beautiful it is.
2:14:15
And I could stare at a tree for hours and then you take mushrooms and like that tree starts like having some more dynamism to it.
2:14:27
So it's just a little boost, but like, I don't really care.
2:14:29
- Yeah, I get into this crazy, like I said, it's only been a handful of times.
2:14:31
'Cause I don't know, it's one of those things where it's still a little unfamiliar to me, but like talking about trees and psilocybin, you know, you think about you start to look in those trees and you think like, in their relative perspective of time, you know,
2:14:49
'cause they're constantly moving around and growing and doing all these things and you think about like, in their perspective, maybe we're just moving way faster than their perception and they're moving at just a normal speed. It's just that you get into all these crazy trains
2:15:01
It's just that you get into all these crazy trains of thought when you sit out in the woods on that stuff but. - 100%, man.
2:15:06
I mean like, maybe that's the history of life.
2:15:09
I mean, humans will have some chance of destroying 95, 99% of the population with nuclear weapons and the trees will remain and they will reconstruct the environment of earth and help the few humans that are made to survive.
2:15:25
And it'll be the fucking trees that we'd be grateful for.
2:15:28
Their actual deep, ancient wisdom.
2:15:34
So maybe they're the intelligent ones. Maybe we're the idiots.
2:15:37
- When you're out in nature like that.
2:15:39
And just reading, just looking at and studying the way all those systems work with soil and trees and animals and how it all just integrates in together so perfectly.
2:15:47
It does give you some sense of peace that maybe there is some system at place that's out of our hands that can just help us with our faults and our repercussions.
2:15:56
And again, like for me, just, yeah, I think just being out there, especially now that now looking at it through the lens, you know, of God. It helps.
2:16:08
I've found no greater peace than just being out in the woods and praying or just trying to focus my mind on that.
2:16:16
Like, but yeah, I would love for you to come out there sometime and- - I'm 100% well I visit.
2:16:22
See, like feeling peaceful out in Virginia in the woods is easy.
2:16:27
Try doing it in the Amazon jungle with Giant.
2:16:29
- Oh, I'd love dude- - And just bites you.
2:16:31
- Dude, I would do anything to go to the Amazon.
2:16:33
- And all the pieces is gone.
2:16:36
You're like, "Motherfucker, what do you?"
2:16:38
And then like a second one joins in, kills the first one and bites you again.
2:16:43
And then you're like, okay, nature is not all.
2:16:46
- [Oliver] Yeah, it's not.
2:16:47
- I mean, there is harmony to it, but part of the harmony is the violence. - [Oliver] Yeah.
2:16:54
- It's just the reality of it. It's sex and violence.
2:16:59
- Like, I guess that's the thing about it though, is like, it has all the same components of humanity, just almost, you know, like almost to a comical level.
2:17:07
- I mean, the real comedy's the monkeys up in the trees, It's like little humans and they're arguing, screaming at each other, throwing stuff, they getting into fights.
2:17:17
It's like reality TV, but like more pure, more real, more distilled down to his fundamentals.
2:17:26
Like we are that, you know?
2:17:29
We put on clothes these days and have a fancy words that we say to each other and look all sexy on Instagram, but we're the same monkeys, apes.
2:17:40
- It's like the old lobsters, you know? But it really is true.
2:17:49
We're all on that same kind of same operating system in a way.
2:17:53
- Brother, this was a huge honor.
2:17:55
I don't have the words to describe how incredible this was and I think it was just fun.
2:18:02
It was really fun talking to you.
2:18:04
- Total honor to be able to come on here for me as well, and especially just to get to meet you in real life and see like, you know, you are what I expected you to be like in a good way.
2:18:16
Like, you know, you just don't ever like, yeah. You're a good dude.
2:18:20
So I appreciate what you're doing.
2:18:21
- I gotta show you the sex dungeon downstairs. - Nice. - Where- - Heck yeah.
2:18:25
- Where I keep sex slaves. It's very different. No. Yeah, man. All right. Time to wake up. Let's go back to.
2:18:32
(Oliver laughing) Thanks for listening to this conversation with Oliver Anthony.
2:18:36
To support this podcast, Please check out our sponsors in the description.
2:18:40
And now, let me leave you with some words from George Orwell.
2:18:44
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
2:18:56
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.