"The following is a conversation with Oliver Anthony, singer songwriter from Virginia, who first gained worldwide fame with his viral hit Rich Men North of Richmond. He became a voice for many who are ..."

"So, I was texting you uh last night uh sitting at an open mic listening to a guy perform Great Balls of Fire. Uh like I told you, he was giving everything he got for like five people in the audience p..."

"that same mindset and was able to maintain it really well is this mandolin player named Johnny Stats in West Virginia. to me he's one of the best and he's won all these awards and stuff and he still w..."

"of I was a little out of place anyway. I feel kind of out of place in a bar to start with. So yeah, this back when you could smoke in bars. There's a whole vibe to it. People smoking, drinking and Yea..."

"I haven't even played any of those in forever now. But that was any of those ones where you get people singing along and stuff. That's what I'd always try to do, you know. Yeah. That song you performe..."

"know, country can do both. You you more often go to the dark place to to the to the pain. Yeah. Well, especially some of the new songs that are coming out that they'll be probably not I mean, I don't ..."

"the people dissipates. It like disappears. 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 divor..."

"like now like when you scroll through some of these videos of people like the big 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 t..."

"talked to to great engineers about this. Jim Keller is a legendary engineer. Elon Elon Musk is another example that you need that I don't know what's a nice term for it, but you need the asshole becau..."

"the things that slowing everything down does is it really demotivates the people that are actually doing the shit. Like the people on the ground, the engineers that are building stuff. It's again soul..."

"get any anything done really. Uh we'll talk about it. By the way, all the love in the world to Jaco. He's great. I've been going through lots of ups and downs in life, lots of low points for myself ov..."

"know like um yeah and I think is like you know the the songs you've created they uh speak to the human condition to the struggle of uh everyday working people in a society that has the elites that try..."

"And then there's also just the the chemistry of the brain. It's like you shake up the brain a little bit. It starts getting it starts getting weird. And so it can get on many uh fronts, it can get rea..."

"do you think like managing your previous like previous friendships or your like you know how has that been tricky for you or like how does that it's been tough. I you know I value deep close long-term..."

"it's great. It's great. And I still do it all the time. I just it's just a different experience now. But I I'm like a Goodwill junkie. Like um most of like most of even my clothes were from Goodwill, ..."

"their heart is in it for the right reasons. They observe that there's a lot of things wrong in the world that they'd like to see different. It's just how do you get those people out of a how do you ge..."

"accurate. Yeah. That's the crazy thing. But it all ties into that same thing like you um yeah in politics now it's almost like there's a rulebook that you have to follow and if you you can't agree wit..."

"because the default incentive of the crowd is to conform to some kind of narrative. It's like a it's like a distributed system that arrives at a narrative and the narrative holds control over that cro..."

"there at shows to capture some of those crowds I had in 24. Man, you mean the size, the intensity? The intensity like it was revolutionary almost. Song of revolution. Yeah. I think of redemption song ..."

"mind to create a 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 to stand back and look at all the prob..."

"Yeah. Great example. Yeah. Underneath that, it's like Chernobyl, uh, which is this nuclear power plant that melted down. Um, I feel like the bureaucracy needs politeness and civility. and paperwork to..."

"So, there's magic there. Was that what how many how many edits? How many like lines did you write? Were there any lines that you were like tormented by haunted by, come back? Should I do it this way o..."

"Um, 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 Got to get Sober. So, literally, that's a good song, man. So, litera..."

"Just imagine the thousands of people you helped with that. Yeah. But it ain't going to happen tonight. So pour them down strong until I [Music] drown. And if I wake up tomorrow, when that sun comes ba..."

"on the hill. That's a genius of song. That's genius, brother. That's genius. It's just crazy to think about. Yeah. And what's this one right before? What is this? Oh, yeah. So, that's like the probabl..."

"sees something in people. Yeah. He's just this he's a little bit younger than I am and he's he wrote music and played and he's got some of his if you look up Draven Refe. is going to kill me for even ..."

"But if you go to his This is really funny too. I'm sorry Draven I love you man. So go to videos and go to oldest first. This is what's so awesome about Draven. He was originally working for this lady ..."

"Yeah. You can see it in there. Um, and there's some good talent like you were showing me this new lady, Gabriel. Yeah she's got it. But not a lot of people would uh record her doing that song. But he'..."

"style of music that we should have never gotten away from in the first place. So huge props for that. for walking away from lucrative multi-million dollar record deals and I'm sure the money that was ..."

"know? Like 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. And to have the integrity to walk away from the bag of money when ..."

"I didn't want to lose. I didn't want to lose those people's trust or like feel you know what I mean like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I've just tried to make every decision around like as best as I can li..."

"when I can. I don't know. I just still feel like I haven't done enough. I think you I think you did a lot. I think you did a lot. I think you're an inspiration. You have helped a huge number of people..."

"um you know your whole perception of reality and like you're just existence in reality as all contingent upon this sort of like this center that you exist in and you have to if you don't have that the..."

"digest every day, like you're there's always there will always be more of us than them and and all that and but like to see that like just to see the light in people's eyes when you say that. But the ..."

"it. And if you look at it, there's so many passionate people that are fighting all these different causes like like just in food. It's the word they use for b for more or less starvation. It's a more ..."

"know, in all domains of life from from food to the music industry honestly to education also to government itself all of it. And that, you know, your music is also just the soundtrack to that spirit t..."

"that. 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 no structure, like no infrast..."

"elements of tyranny and from that the the human spirit rises uh like I said with w with with with songs like the ones you write or at the founding in this country you know that's why all these diverse..."

"two world wars and uh you know especially in the second world war the United States played a very crucial role and there was a lot of ideological like battle of ideas going on at that time. Yeah. Of t..."

"to have the freedom to do whatever the hell I want now. And So, uh, I wanted to take a road trip across the United States for several months. And one of the things I wanted to do is to just to to talk..."

"be overly polite and say, "Hey Debbie you have a good weekend like you said." Like we need all this controversy and this turmoil and like we need the hell of what that side that that the internet brin..."

"thousands of messages like you talked about from people. You gotten to talk to thousands of people about their pain. Through your work, through your music you've been an inspiration to those people to..."

"and I knew that I wasn't doing I just knew I wasn't doing I wasn't filling my purpose and I wasn't being the best version of myself I could be. And so the the alternative to like facing yourself in th..."

"you know? I was almost like in I was wrestling with myself, you know, and so I don't know. I just got to a point where it just like I Yeah, just a just a very just a very overwhelming sense of numbnes..."

"you'd never see it coming you know like I don't know maybe that's a general thing with it seems like a lot of times men mask that better and you don't pick up on it as much but um I think it's like yo..."

"mountain. And I think you're accurately describing how it happens, which is gradually. Yeah. Seeing yourself in a negative light over time slowly suffocates you and then the burden of the responsibili..."

"suffering in uh in a lot of and I think it is disproportionately in men in a lot of men and they hide it well that's why blue collar workers have such a high suicide rate and all too and why it is so ..."

"your self-worth is zero. Cuz if you're not even willing to like if you're not even willing to like have basic hygiene and and eat decent food and try to take care of yourself, it's like why? How like ..."

"girlfriend left you for some other dude and like don't matter what it is like if if at least that little glimmer of hope that like that faith that there is a chance at something greater like that can ..."

"support system from underneath you. And 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 s..."

"great heartbreak songs. Yeah. You know, people, you know there's something valuable about people fucking you over and and hardship and all that kind of stuff. Even the best of us have terrible parts o..."

"but it's like u that human component of us is what is what we is what's so important to our to our long-term existence. like our our ability to to have connection with each other and the joy we find i..."

"to remember. A lot of us, especially in the United States under a capitalist system, are chasing money. Yeah. It's important like to remember what you're doing it all for. I got to talk to you about y..."

"to you can't just fake it. you have to like be in it. You have to like really feel the song as if you're singing it as if you're writing it for the first time. So, as a performer that that he says tha..."

"been sitting on my phone probably a couple months before it that's why I said I have too many unfinished songs. It's exactly what I meant. I've got all these little snippets of things like a little bl..."

"just go away. And typically it's like it's only maybe the first half of the first verse is what I'll get or it'll be like the chorus line I'll get and then I'll build the rest of the song around that ..."

"But in nature everything is certain. Everything has a system like even on the microbial level of soil there's this like intricate system and you know soil soil fixes like the bacteria fixes the soil a..."

"is something bigger than me that like Yeah. 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 yo..."

"you're just like birds, monkeys, just everything. And the the the the floor full of insects. Yeah. bigger kinds of ants murdering smaller kinds of ants. It's an orchestra of of insects, but there it's..."

"monkey part of my brain wants to just go burn it all down. Like it's just like not good. Like I don't know. I just instinctually observe it as being not good. And I don't know exactly how to describe ..."

"probably my that was like the beginning point of the restoration of of of me you know, 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. An..."

"soul. Yeah, it's emulating things that we need to be healthy humans, but it's just like feeding it visually and and audibly to us, but it's not giving us the it's giving us the instant gratification o..."

"we find people that are way smarter than me and and look at all the things that trend on social media like the videos that everybody watches. Like I don't know what it is. If it's woodsplitting and pl..."

"we're wasting a lot of our our bandwidth. like a lot of the like we only have so many minutes in the day to even use our brains and our brains can only do but so much in a day anyway and when we're wa..."

"between the two. I'm with you. I'm not against technology at all. I think um evil most certainly existed long before there were computers like and and in even more treacherous ways like now we have th..."

"friends, but then I got to do it with people that I'm actually friends with in physical reality. Yeah. And you get to hear each other's voice and you just talk and talk shit about each other together...."

"that's caused a lot of our symptoms is that we are all like very lonely even though we are all we all seem to be so well connected digitally. We are all so lonely. You got to think I mean Modern Warfa..."

"outside the box but we have to have both in order to have a healthy society like oh and also the the thing that bothers me your song Richmond north of Richmond a lot of people so a pretty even split p..."

"positions of power, and power corrupts. And those in in those positions often forget about the everyday person, the working class, and they leave them behind ultimately uh serve the people that are cl..."

"who's a real sweet lady, but um older lady lives in a trailer, single wide trailer, has probably got I don't know 30 or 40 cats that she feeds at her house. Nice. It was a rainy Saturday morning. It w..."

"just just love you know to each other too 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 thin..."

"helps. So when you posted about the the three-legged cat, there you go. And I I I I think of your music and your life story in the same way. It's just been through some shit. Just like Bukowski. Neith..."

"if I was going to do anything on here from the older songs that that was relatable to everything we've talked about, it it probably be I Want to Go Home. Sounds good. [Music] Well, if it weren't for m..."

"that guitar? Well, the guy who made this like saved my butt cuz everything blew up and I was playing that little Gretch resonator that's in all the original videos and my my wife had got me that off o..."

"because that's what's in your head already. So, you're going to go out there a little bit this year. What are what are some things you're looking forward to? You're going to travel a bit. You're going..."

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"where people can go like and build this sense of community. We talked about like it's almost like a sanctuary, if you want to call it that, but it's like a it's just a space that can't be perverted by..."

"like in their relative perspective of time, you know, cuz they're constantly moving around and growing and doing all these things. And you think about like in their perspective maybe we're just we're ..."