Stoney Wayne Bass

Full episode transcript, auto-generated from the audio and lightly formatted (verbatim, not edited).

purple eyes [Music] [Music] I mean no I'm a little slow so you'll have to forgive me that's fine but you do look like you probably have some mad bars no I definitely made beats for people in high school did you really yeah I didn't know what I was doing but I did it were they any good they're okay would you like to

foreign did you beatbox or did you actually make beats no straight on the midi on the midi there we go yeah it wasn't stolen Fruity Loops at all Fruity Loops yeah was it Fruit of Loom stolen fruit of blue I used to work for Duluth so I can't mess with him isn't that the clothing company yeah where did you work for them

damn is that where they're out of no they're out of uh not Duluth Minnesota they're out of uh Wisconsin I didn't know there was a Duluth Wisconsin There's not how'd you get linked up with them I just got a job oh they were opening and I went there that was my really inspirational it's not good it's normal job stuff you know yeah

but I uh that was my last real job like not for myself that I had to wake up at a certain time did you do design stuff for them no I'm like a late bloomer I didn't start like I've only been full time doing this for like a year and a half now yeah I just had like regular jobs I've had every

job though like repoed vehicles and worked on trailers and yeah I did it all and then one day I was like man I should do this instead yeah here pull that mic up to you look up to me Stoney Wayne is your real name Stoney Wayne yeah Stoney Wayne bass yeah that's your real name yeah I'm named after um you know who

Stony Burke is he's an old Jack Lord he was on Hawaii 5-0 he had a rodeo star like a rodeo show he did in the 50s called Stony Burke okay and my dad rodeoed so yeah after that what did your dad do uh he had his card in uh bulldogging but he like team roped and did everything but he was better at

Bulldog that's back when they did everything yeah after that he did whatever he could do to make it work heck yeah he just looked like red steagall so he could pull it off did he do okay how many years did he pro rodeo uh he did like had his car for like two years and then blew out his ACL and started like

Trucking after that okay yeah what time frame would that have been mid 70s yeah no like I'm no counting like writing songs but I've wrote songs and they're all just my dad's stories really yeah dude he was way cooler than me he rodeoed and like drove trucks when it was cool when you could like you know get on speed and do eight

days back and forth just like hauling cattle from Florida to Texas eight days straight away back and forth yeah dude it was like all the cool [expletive] you know like back when like all my favorite songs are all trucker songs back in the day yeah so yeah like all that stuff I love that those stories of him but he's old now and

I've heard them all like 50 times so I still enjoy them but like the only cool thing is I got married a few years ago and now I'm hearing them and they're slightly different when he's telling my wife I'm like you're an old man these stories are different are they more interesting no I feel like he's losing some of it he's losing

the good parts well he might be forgetting it a little bit I need to like remember hey remember you told me you're on acid that part and just kind of throw it in there and see if he like oh yeah because he's done the opposite of cleaning up my dad did like the opposite of what most people do he got he retired

and then he just like [expletive] rails man yeah he got super tattooed and just drinks all the time and just does what he wants to do all the time which is sick but so prop I'm still married again okay yeah because it was just like my mom dipped out when I was like seven so it's just me and my dad and then

he like did the thing and raised the family and I was in 4-H and did everything you're supposed to do and then I graduated and he moved down here to Decatur and then he lives in Decatur he did okay yeah because my cousin runs a trailer dealership out here and he came in which one uh Texas Custom Trailers yeah man with uh

the guy that owns a Wade yeah that's my cousin no kidding yeah small world for sure yeah we um I worked with him over at uh he ran that AG Vantage and I next door there's a trailer shop and we worked in there okay yeah so then so your dad moved here for how long a couple years like three or four years

and that's how I ended up down here okay yeah where were you at before uh I was raised outside of Amarillo like we grew up on a little ranch oh you're from the Panhandle I am yeah I'm from Hereford actually but nobody knows where that is yeah man I don't work for this that helps you know the smell that's all so did

you yeah no doubt about it uh so did y'all run cattle out there or did you work it my Grandpa did okay my grandpa did for a long time and then my dad um he worked feedlots and then he uh like worked for the county for a long time and he retired from there for people that don't know explain what it's like

up there man in a town like that what's crazy is one of the most annoying things out here is you hear people be like I'm from a small town I'm like it's a small town but when you're 30 minutes away from somewhere else I grew up like 45 minutes away from anything else in the middle of nowhere and it's just like we

have like shog like [expletive] fog as you come into town from all the cattle and it's weird it's a really explain that fog man that fog something else you come into town and there's like a Mist but not like a cool Mountain Mist it's just like straight to [expletive] fog hoop Mist oh my gosh it's terrible just straight pooping but it's what's

ridiculous is I never had allergies out there I move out here where there's trees and I'm dying but you know cow [expletive] good to go right but no it's uh it's definitely a place where everybody all they do every night or most of the weekends is just drive around you drive to the Sonic you drive to the community center in a loop

over and over have a couple adult beverages yeah man piss on somebody's you know uh Hood just to see if you can do it yeah you can right small enough town yeah you would think it'd be the opposite yeah no man um I mean it's a cool place to grow up but I'm glad I didn't stay yeah one of those type things

what it typically people do that stay there are they working like uh you end up like working in feedlots or driving a truck that's pretty much it that's like the equivalent of the oil field out there is you work in the feedlots you drive trucks you work for whatever your parents did that's a lot of it that I see which is like

the weird part is like all the people that I would think I didn't get along with in high school that's the weird like flip of it is I've done work like design work for people in high school that I didn't get along with and now we see it's just a weird like World flipped around type thing you know yeah but you know

in a cool way it is in a cool way you know I was kind of a like one of the weirdest things about growing up is really realizing you were a turd when you were young and you're just like one of my things I do every morning is you pop up and you know I'm going to the restroom and taking care of

my morning and I look at my memories on Facebook and I end up just deleting stuff I said like 2008 not that it was offensive it was just cringy like I said things that I was like oh okay but the only one that like I see I see it every year and it kind of like brings a smile to my face is

like 2008 everybody said is like your statuses we thought you had to say is doing so and so yeah I just always put is going bass fishing hell yeah that's my favorite one every year it is amazing how much I wouldn't want to hang out with me oh absolutely and I thought I was cool as crap too like I really thought I

had it going on yeah I'll meet I'll see people that I haven't seen since high school and a lot of them uh they kind of say it as a dig but they'll be like man you're so much different than you were in high school like that's a bad thing or something and I'll say to some of them I'll be like uh I'll

be like yeah you know changed a little bit you're the exact same it's like who would want to be the exact same person as when they were a 16 year old in high school yeah what a turd well and I think that's that thing about growing up in a small town is there is a lot of that yeah maybe yeah most of

the people I know there I mean everybody's different it's like you're supposed to be why would you want to be the exact same tune had it all figured out at 17 and I'm good to go yeah exactly so when did you move from Hereford I moved from Hereford I moved from Hereford to Amarillo to go to school I went to WT and

I um I did like radio stuff there like radio and film and I had a radio show where I did like old country music and that kind of thing cool yeah and that's like now I do a lot of DJing and that's what started it but I moved out there and I did that for a couple years and uh 2000 2010 I

moved out here I think yeah that is when it was 2010 because it was yeah that's right and I um for no reason I just need to get out dropped out of school three times figured I'd try something new you know there you go but yeah um because out there like I grew up like in the music scene but in all music

scenes like I book I booked a bunch of like hardcore and punk and metal shows for forever and that's like kind of what got me into being a designer I uh just making flyers I could see that influence in some of your work for sure there's like a I don't even know what you would call it I use whenever I explain stuff

like that I usually butcher the terminology man I don't know the terminology that's like the one thing is like I feel like an outsider in this world because I'm not like super artsy kind of guy like I didn't go to school for it yeah and so like there is a part of that I do feel like an outsider because if I'm trying

to talk about something I'll have to look it up to make sure I'm not sounding stupid because yeah I'm like the way the letters do different here it's real nice yeah it's that way with music with a lot of people guys who are you know classically trained or uh have some sort of formal education in music you know they're armed with a

lot of information and terminology and stuff and then what's funny though is when it really comes down to being creative and making something and doing something unique a lot of them are have a tough time with that yeah absolutely I think it's the same thing in my world because I think like we're saying like the DIY the do-it-yourself thing of like doing

punk shows and stuff that kind of told me I didn't have to ask for permission to do [expletive] exactly like I can just do it if you like it you like it yeah and I don't need a reason to I don't have to explain why this worked sounds cool yeah looks cool whatever you know that's the way I think most are the

best are that's the best way to do it yeah I mean because you just find a bunch of different influences that move you in a certain way and stick them all together yeah I mean I think that's why like there's a big correlation I mean between like punk music and like folk and old cowboy music it was people that didn't really know

how to play their instruments that well just kind of singing what they knew yeah just do it because it's cool yeah absolutely it moves yeah for sure man well so it was your day I guess your dad was just really into music or um I mean sort of like my dad was enough but it was really like my grandpa like my grandpa

wasn't into music but he so he grew up like on the Texas Oklahoma line in like texola he grew up in Eric and he was like the same age as Roger Miller okay and so he knew Roger Miller growing up and people like that and he had Barn dances growing up and like Tommy Duncan from Bob Wills one of the Playboys he

would come out there and play and so I grew up around a lot of that kind of stuff with it and then kind of rebelled against it because you're not supposed to like what your parents like oh yeah and so I went to like whole different thing and then came back around part of being a lame kid absolutely man they were on

to it oh I know now I would never I hope he doesn't listen to this but like my dad's like cool as [expletive] and I thought he sucked growing up and now I'm like oh man you did all the cool stuff dude yeah it's nice to hit that point where you have that realization but then it's kind of a bummer because you

probably didn't appreciate them as much as you should have I hit it pretty early because me and my dad did spend a lot of time together he when he was driving so he would work for the county and then on the weekends he would drive trucks and I would go with him on the truck and stuff and listen to music and he

would just talk about like Rodeo days and dudes that are Stock Contractors that showed me like there's this one I'm Gonna Save all names but he's a pretty big stock contractor and he uh him and my dad rodeoed together growing up and he um he should he has all these records that he's like oh yeah he showed me this down the basement

and we were rolling up and listen to this and it was like Guy Clark and Jerry Jeff and you know all the standards and he always relates them back to that and I was like okay so I could tell what that guy was into because of that yeah but yeah like it definitely makes you like appreciate like that air of because I'm

like even when it comes to Art and stuff I'm sort of obsessed with like the 70s in Texas because it was where like the hippies and the Cowboys came together and music and in art and stuff so yeah there's a lot of cool [expletive] going on there and then he sort of lived part of that so I like to hear those stories

yeah there seems to be a cool merging with that those worlds of that art world and then there's like a there's a grit in a in a uh a realness and a blue collarness to a lot of the Texas stuff yeah like even a guy like your dad probably a pretty hardened guy rodeoed hard worked hard played hard but then within the

culture still here in Texas there's a lot of appreciation for art yeah and those two worlds coming together super interesting because when you get out on the coast or you get into more metropolitan areas it's really segmented in terms of like the art world and then you're more like blue collar type people for sure and those don't mix very often well and

that was like kind of my um avoidance or just like why I stepped I didn't I don't like being called an artist ever yeah I struggled a long time with like I mean all right I'd always joke with my wife too she'll walk in the house and uh I call it like arting and she'll walk in the house and like the lights

are dim and like I'm just sitting over there with my guitar in the corner you know and I've been there for four hours oh yeah the weirdest thing ever and she's like what are you doing and I'm like I am arting I have been arting all over this house today I've been having all the creative juices just flowing all day long I

have always shot away from it being like art I'm an artist well there's like always a pretentiousness it is and especially if you grew up like super blue collar like that you mix the two and you're not sure what to think of it and then and I think that's kind of why like my comfort zone is doing Western stuff is because it

kind of mixes both those pretty easily yeah and it's like I kind of think with like cowboy stuff the reason I like it so much is I don't get to live the life that I did Growing Up like I don't get to ride horses or do any of the things I used to but this is like my only connection back to it

yeah it's like you know I get to do those rough little Western scenes and it feels like it do you think in some ways it allows you to reimagine it in a different way yeah absolutely it brings that real Nostalgia that I can make it be what I wanted it to be cool because doing it like it's not fun it's not cool

it's like um you know everything stinks and you smell bad and you feel like [expletive] and but looking back at it you're like oh those are pretty good times and I can remember it like that yeah you get to pick the Romantic parts of it yeah absolutely you don't get to remember you know getting thrown off into a pipe fence you get

to remember like how beautiful the sunset was yeah dude yeah there's something about it and until somebody really travels up into the Panhandle and sees that whole world up there it's hard to understand it yeah and it does breed a certain type of person and yeah man I think that's why there's such good music like out of Lubbock in that whole area

there is you know I think it's love it because that's the biggest city around there but people come from all around out there you know and it's it does do we might get in trouble with lumping Lubbock into the Panhandle man I've got into this several times hey well I got I have I don't I don't care but I got absolutely destroyed

by some dude online because I called Lubbock the Panhandle and I was going up to Amarillo and he like he went through the whole the whole deal on my Facebook thing and he was pissed I have a feeling I know you're talking about is he an authority of Lubbock up there an authority no I think he's a musician though he didn't write

a book just now I haven't I can't I'd be honest I saw his comment and then I that's as far as I went you know what I'm talking about okay yeah I'm not that guy pal you're not that guy yeah because there's a guy that's an authority I mean he's a good dude I like him but he's very particular about Lubbock it's

like man I lived in Lubbock and you know I can I can catch [expletive] for it I hated Lubbock really I like being there I don't like living there or like the time I spent there and I may have been in like it was the worst time in my life too so I may have been bad there you know I'm judging things

on times it's like Amarillo I go back and I spend a lot of time in Amarillo and it was terrible and I go back and it's still terrible but I can maintain it for a little bit sure because it's weird those places do have like amarillas with really cool like little art scene going on like cool stuff going on there but it

I feel like I can only see it looking back and it's like we were talking about booking shows I think it's because it's like equidistant between everything and that's why Amarillo worked just like it's halfway between like Denver and Dallas or Oklahoma City and Albuquerque and we could book shows for like bands that shouldn't be there because it was like in the

middle of a long ass drive so now you're booking part of this and the live music side of this I was yeah I helped run like a like a venue is a really rough word for it was you know about double the size of this room it was rough but it was uh it was fun because you know a lot of energy

I bet it was man and a lot of smells a lot of energy a lot of smells a lot of stuff going on so but it was like a rock yeah absolutely it was like the kind of thing that like I remember the first like really time I remember really getting punched in the face was I tried to defend this dude that

had this super expensive cap and got a 40 thrown at it and I was like hey you shouldn't do that and this dude just like I'm not proud he knocked the crap out of me the dude that threw yeah that threw it I tried to confirm through a 40. like a 40 a malt liquor at like an orange cab did y'all sell

no 40s in there so they would bring it in oh yeah people brought whatever they did you saw did y'all sell alcohol yeah no you didn't sell alcohol at all this was super DIY man this is like so it's just a room yeah absolutely that's kind of cool it was it was like super cool for the time and like I could get

the people that I was listening to into this room and we could make it happen and that's kind of what I was saying like I could get the this is my space time so I could like send somebody a message on MySpace and then be like hey how much do you want to play this I could do that and we just set

it up and it had it worked we just did hard tickets at the door yeah if that just there you go let's come in come on in yeah like and you know that process kind of [expletive] me over I mean messed me up a few times because we had this one of the bigger shows we ever booked a bunch of this band

came we had a ton of kids show up made a lot of money and somebody stole our jar from the door yeah it was a nightmare man because these were like dudes from like one band was from Boston and one band was from like somewhere else up there these are like I'm 15 or 16. these are like dudes with tattoos on their

face scared the crap out of me I was like what are we gonna do they're gonna kill us they're just gonna murder us that's what's gonna happen which is you know pretty Sound Logic but uh we just went around and raised some money and it worked they're really nice but it was that was the first time like um this is not going

to go well for me so you weren't doing this as like a real form of income no not at all it was it was honestly because I wanted to see the bands and somebody had to do it did you listen to Country growing up yeah absolutely but then you made the transition that high school years into like some heavier stuff man I'm

like super ADHD like I didn't get diagnosed with that until late in life but it's been always apparent to me and I listen to everything all the time and so like I was super into country but I was also super into all the rest of this and it was just like segmented parts of my life you know but I think that's growing

up I would grow up in Hereford and I would go to shows in Amarillo so it was like different parts of my life yeah and I could segment those out and I still kind of think I do that with things like I still go to a ton of metal shows and I'll go to rap shows and I go to because I don't

know man Life's too short to like do one thing so that's when you developed your mad bars yeah that's exactly what it was I was going and listen I was like all right here we go yeah people slam the lunch raise down for like a beat that's the back Port so it's pretty good uh can I hear some no absolutely not okay

I don't know if I remember any of them if it wouldn't be completely terrible I would try but you still listen to some rap oh yeah a ton of it I got super into the Lo-Fi stuff oh yeah recently I love it yeah man that's um I have a bunch of like do you know who John Moreland is so John Moreland and

I'm really good buddies with um a dude that plays with him all the time John Calvin Abney and he does a lot of Lo-Fi like hip-hop beats okay with Moreland actually just released a beat tape he does it on his own but yeah he how is it just like tracks or there are no like lyrics or anything it's just straight like Lo-Fi

beats interesting it's really cool man because that dude's like a huge sneaker head too him and really Calvin both are yeah like I got that common one yeah big sneaker heads and big um like do hip-hop stuff but yeah dude uh the Lo-Fi thing trying to explain that to somebody there's even drummers too that somehow don't think that I understand where they're

coming from where they think that it's not correct yeah and it's not in time but explaining to drummer is the idea of playing behind a Beat or in front of a beat or on top of a beat yeah and there's guys that you know they'll be like well it's either in time or it's not well that's like I don't know how you

can't feel loping into a beat too well that's also what you're saying about like there's a point where you become too trained that you can't think outside that anymore 100 and I think that's sort of the same thing as like with the stuff I do with like drawing or the type of thing I know the rules enough to break them as long

as I don't know them too much and I think that's like my level right there is like I know what rules I'm breaking but I don't want to get too wrapped up in those rules so do you have other artists that um will look at your stuff and sort of be a little bit perplexed in the sense of they'll be like how

did you decide to do this like where did I do but it's like not as negative as I thought it would be that's like a big thing that I always you know I think everybody deals with like the Imposter syndrome thing and you know what why am I even doing this yes what is that just like the idea of like am I

supposed to be here am I a fraud like people are looking at this it's just the idea of like what is everybody else thinking about what I'm doing so is that just a confidence thing I think it's a confidence and I think it's just like part of my creative process I realized like a couple years ago that there's a part of my

process that I'm gonna hate when I'm doing and when I work through that then comes the good stuff yeah and so it's just like once I accepted that like because I feel like I would have to be a sociopath to like love everything that comes out of what I do like you know I think with a song book or anything there's like

all this stuff that didn't make it and this that did and you know you know every once in a while you start like critiquing that you're like why can I not do as much as this person I think social media breeds a lot of that it's like you see the Rose The Rose tinted lens whatever it is from everybody else and you

look on the internet and you say wow these people are playing these shows and they're doing all this and they're being they're doing so much and I can't even get through this yeah there's somebody that has a quote something like comparison is the killer of all joy and happiness absolutely you know and just not you got to be able to be happy

for somebody else that's finding some success with whatever they're doing see and that's my thing is I think I'm like almost too big of a cheerleader I get so stoked about everybody else doing everything that's a killer quality not a lot of people have that I get so stoked I mean the only time it really hurts me is I if I see

somebody doing something good and I could help them like visually be better I kind of push into that and sometimes it makes me lose money but you know it I think that's a part of like the ups and downs of it you know I see somebody doing like a really cool like I have a friend that has like a taco stand and

it was really cool but I was like man I would love to make that do the logo but I know he's not making a lot of money I'm just gonna do it and it ends up working you know yeah I like making people look the best they can if I can't help at all so when you so you went to school in

Amarillo yeah and then you ended up dropping out a few times I did yeah and were you all when did you like really start like drawing or making art so okay I'll tell the story because this is like and growing up in Hereford this is a hurricane you only have five more minutes only five more okay but um I was uh like

whenever I would take notes in school I would just doodle like crazy because that's how my brain would work I could listen to what you're saying if I'm doing something else so I would do I would do like all these I grew up watching like I couldn't sleep at night so I would watch like all the old like 40s cartoons like Chuck

Jones and Tex Avery kind of stuff and I would do it when I did it and this coach that he did not like me at all and he wasn't my coach he was just a teacher you're saying coach uh like football he was a cross-country coach interesting yeah and he like saw me doing this and you know I was I wouldn't say

I was a troublemaker but I did like start [expletive] a lot I just like to make things more that might be the exact definition oh troublemakers yeah but it was me so it couldn't have been but uh and so like you know he took this note that I was doing that had all this ridiculous stuff on it and made it into an

overhead and like made fun of me in front of the class and I was like man that really like you know for being like the dude that start all the [expletive] that was the thing that hurt my feelings I was like and I just kind of like closeted that after that interesting and I just hold on so he saw you doodling and

just making some stuff and he made a presentation of it yeah so the back of this is did you kind of deserve it yes I did I can fully say now that I deserved it but it doesn't change the fact that it did like stifle me sure because the full story is I was kind of a [expletive] in this class like we

were dissecting a frog or something with uh a substitute teacher there and I was just throwing pieces of the frog out the window perfect and I would just give him back and it was just a cadaver with nothing left so like yeah I definitely did deserve it but uh it did make me like I was like oh I'm not going to show

anybody that's ever again and I kind of just like made it like a private thing and like I would do like design for Flyers when I book shows and stuff but um when I got with my wife uh it was probably like four or five years ago we were moving one time and she like saw these sketchbooks and she was like what

you draw and I was like yeah just kind of on this were y'all married at the time no we were just dating we'd only been dating for like a couple months at that time which is pretty brave for her to help me move sure speaking is how I am but she goes through and she's like wow that's crazy and so she just

started like pushing it real hard and because she like plays guitar and sings and stuff and um she was like you should like do this and so I kind of like push it out and started doing it and then like uh you know being the open whatever I started seeing a psychiatrist a few years ago just for like I was saying like

ADHD stuff and I wanted to like you know maybe I should try to do some medication because I've never done anything like that and it was like the shift in my life that guy basically kind of called me out because so from booking shows I went to running a record label like an independent one like I helped I did like digital and

it was mostly like metal Punk stuff like that and uh I was talking to my psychiatrist about this and he's like man it sounds like you spent a lot of time helping other people and I was like oh no it's my thing he's like yeah but what do you do for you and it kind of just hit me that like I wasn't

doing anything for me I was doing everything to promote everyone else around me but like I wasn't doing it so I just started like posting stuff on Instagram I was like oh I'll draw this let me see how and it started getting like really good feedback and that was the first time I got that boost of like oh maybe I can do

something yeah and then I just like dove in and started taking classes online and went through the whole thing and it just kind of came up real fast you just so you did the DIY education on it too absolutely but that was like more my speed like sitting in a class and listening to somebody talk about something makes me want to lose

my mind man yeah there's it seems because I'm a little bit like you I'm a space cadet like I'm all over the place and um like I have to have people around me to implement things yeah I have so many ideas and stuff but it's like okay bro we gotta I mean I think that's a great thing like once I've kind of

figured that like Farm out of like you know hey I can pitch this idea and helps it because you know things can go crazy just like ideas in your head all day going out and if you have somebody to pitch those two that help you apply them you're like oh [expletive] here we go you get a lot done absolutely man but in

terms of learning things it seems like people like us it's like it's going like a formal education route I always felt like I was being forced into learning something at a slow rate too that's what killed me yeah because like it's like I could I can't get it let's go I could sit there for eight hours not sleep on that and be

like well I know that now here we go as opposed to going and seeking the information on our own it's like you made a level of commitment there and no one's forcing me to learn it I'm learning it just because I want to yeah and then I'm like so much more into it but yeah because then it's my thing yeah I own

it because of the sociopaths but uh I think a lot of creatives are honestly man like you talk to people that are creative you're like oh man you're all messed up too cool yeah so you ended up going to some school like when did you start making the trans so you were making artwork for more like rock metal type Punk stuff and

then you started merging over into some more like really like that was just like me doing flyers and design like I never did a whole bunch of that like of my own art like I knew so when I moved to Denton I kind of just like got into like meeting songwriters and meeting people like I don't know if you know who slobber

bone is but they were one of my I had this moment and when I was in high school that this guy his wife was making him sell those CDs and it was my musical transformation moment he handed me the stack of CDs that just like changed my life I didn't know that like there were Rock and Roll country bands he just gave

me like Whiskeytown and Uncle Tupelo and all these like bands that were like Rock and Roll country bands and I didn't know it existed and then like slobber bone was one of them from Denton and then I um I ended up like meeting them and now I'm like maybe doing merch for them and it's kind of a crazy deal but like I

just started Meeting those people and going to shows and they would see on Instagram like hey you do this you want to do a shirt and I just slowly built up from that yeah because like I did like bands and like friends bands and that was a lot of it like just kind of networking I always say that I reverse engineered it

like most the time people will come out of school and they'll be looking for clients well I had all these people that I've known for years that all of a sudden I have a skill and I can help people out and so it kind of like reverse engineered that made it work you know that's the best way to do it man I

think so man it's got to be real it's all about networking no matter what you do yeah because it's better when it's organic agree just networked without actually knowing you were networking no I was just meeting people and drinking beer and then turns out it helped me hashtag networking right well like we were talking about mode like it's weird the way I

met mode was just Michael mode Michael mode Michael mode he's a bass player he's playing with Tristan Mario's right yeah that's right see when I met him he was my best friend growing up and him playing in a band together from it was in Hereford like the dude I'm talking about he also played with like Randall kingster in his like his first

iteration because mode played for Randall for a little bit too and like this is back you know way like 20 I don't know early loving days like 2012 12 early for me I was moved though but um I met him and they were in this band called Logan Taylor and the Thunderbirds it's like man that's one of the bands that I wish

would have worked yeah because they were great I listened to their I have like their thing on iTunes and when I go into like the car and turn it on it's you know certain things will play Logan Taylor yeah like he doesn't make music or anything anymore but uh I might have to check that one out yeah man it's on streaming stuff

but it's pretty good man it's very uh in the vein of like I don't know did you ever listen to Whiskey town like yeah so which is funny that you call it country rock well like because like whiskey town is one of those that when you say country rock nowadays whiskeytown's like folk right compared to a lot of that stuff but this

is it's mainly because I don't like the term alt country I think that term just got thrown so hard out but I think there's a bunch of them that are just we're having to come up with new terminology because it's like we just don't know what this man and there's ones that like drive me crazy like cow Punk that one's the worst

one for me and that one's been around forever cow Punk the one that hasn't been done yet it's Cal pop Cal Pop I can see that I mean that's what is that like what Casey musgrave's new record is that's what happens when you go that's yeah I think that could be I mean I love her stuff I do too absolutely I think

that there will be that because there are a lot of people that I've seen that started out doing country that are going way more pop as they go in yeah I think that's what that's going to be that's cow pop yeah but like Casey yeah she's got some heavy pop influences but I still wouldn't consider her like pop country no some of

that stuff see and that's the difference is I like good pop music me too I'm not a fan of like most popcorn absolutely 100 yeah I'm the exact same way cheers to that there you go man no I mean I grew up I have a playlist on Spotify and it just says pop because I like it too and I just uh but

some of this stuff is so bad oh dude and so shallow and that like you can ride a good catchy pop song and have some depth dude absolutely I mean like one of my favorite records of all time is a pop record like I love the beach boys and like early Beach Boys stuff and like Pet Sounds yeah it's super deep and

it's super poppy heck yeah just because it's catchy doesn't mean it has to be but uh High Fidelity it talks about that about like the Happy pop music and how it's super depressing with the words but it's super happy what do they call it's just pop music like what came first off that movie High Fidelity with John Cusack I've never seen that

it's great man it's like a heartbroke [expletive] that you know runs a record store and he's you know better than everybody with music and has his heart broke a lot and relates it all to music but yeah it's good it's John Cusack it's the same thing as always yeah but it relates to music so I dig it yeah heck yeah dude so

you're in Denton now I am and are you just freelancing for just pretty much anybody and everybody yeah you're making a design for me I am making a design for you I'm excited about that it's weird because the things I get stoked on I end up with like 50 copies in front of me that I'm like what am I gonna do here

whoa yeah and so I try to go like right now I'm like you do mock-up kind of things yeah I do like um my thing lately is I realized I was spending too much time before I showed somebody something so I just do super rough sketches yeah because like you can look and see what I do you know sure and then like

what's really been killing me lately I'm like you know that's the weirdest thing about being self-employed is you're your own workflow yeah and so you have to put things and as things come you're like okay how important is this when like lately it's been show posters because around like the be the end of November you get a ton of shows and so

pushing those out end of November you do I don't know why I've done five posters for like the week of Thanksgiving interesting like wild or blue I did one for them that's like that Friday yeah my buddy Isaac's opening for him Have you listened to him Isaac Hoskins yeah uh I think man I don't think I've been doing a lot of work

man he's one of those dudes that like the first time I heard him he is like man why is this guy not the one everybody's listening to he's and not even just the two of my friend's horn because we became friends after I was a fan he's just an amazingly real songwriter and he's from Kansas so I feel like Kansas Panhandle that's

like the same thing you know and I don't know it's just like the first time I heard him and now like after years we're working together me and him have like this old man meeting where we have breakfast once a week and just [expletive] I'll have to do what's your favorite song of his man um there's like Honky Tonk songs like picking

them up and putting them down that are really good and then there's like sad bastard songs he does like 1942. okay it's kind of like I'm always like a sucker for like the old love songs like the whole hook on that song is like they don't make love like they did in 1942 yeah and my grandparents were married for like 74 years

when Mike they passed away and they passed away like three weeks from each other whoa so yeah like that was my epitome of like that's love you know and uh my grandpa he's old you know West Texas Cowboy rough and didn't say much and only relationship advice he ever gave me was sometimes you got to go to the barn whoa yeah and

that's I got this tattoo with a horse in a barn because I was like yeah you gotta remember oh let's see that tattoo you got a horseshoe on there too there you go man yeah how come you did the Horseshoe uh just because that was what I Associated hanging out in the barn with him yeah is you know horseshoe and then him

always powder on [expletive] was he a horseshoe he was and he just you know worked he probably had to yeah he knew enough to do it when he had to and then he made stuff out of horseshoes all the time I remember you've probably seen this the it was a horseshoe and a bunch of old nails and it was like a balancing

cowboy with two weights on it have you seen this I don't know it's just like a thing they put around the house but it was like a horseshoe base and a stem that came up and then old nails that made a little cowboy that had weights that balanced on it and he was interesting see and that's like when you talk about art

that's what I think about is my grandpa with that dude you know what I mean yeah absolutely because that's if I could find a picture of it like you write that down that's the implementer over there balancing horseshoe nail guy yeah like yeah but like that's the kind of stuff when we talk about like where we you see ART versus what you

were told versus what it is my grandpa didn't set out to make art he made little games of nails that you could take apart like functional stuff is my favorite and so like he uh one of the coolest things that I have that I've been making stuff with it but I want to do more with it is he left me this or

he didn't leave it to me I just got it this huge stack of Western Horsemen uh magazines from like the 50s to like the 70s and I want to steal all those pictures and make [expletive] out of them because there was like people cared about what stuff looked like back then way more than they do now uh what do you mean like

the way the ads were set up or the way the pitchers were like you would think now that art is more like sought after but I think back then people even like ads the ads look good back then you would go to like the back of a magazine and they had good ads and the type looked really good on them and it

just like it took more to do it so people cared do you think yeah for sure like by the time it got to where somebody was seeing that in a magazine it had gone through so many different people which like is mind-blowing to me when I see something terrible now yeah when I see like a terrible album cover of like a big

artist I'm like you know how many people that went through that said that's good yeah it doesn't make it makes sense for like a smaller artist DIY but these big ones it's like how did you really that's it oh yeah and a pastor holding his guitar oh yeah are you serious just cheesing and even like and but now it's all about just

quantity it is because everybody's fighting the algorithm game just data points much as much as much as possible speaking of that I dealt with a guy that's like a bigger country guy not in my vein but we just would you like another uh yeah absolutely nice cold Cruiser huh make it a cold snack you know that you had a montucky cold snack

the speaking of design that looks better than the product the design of that can is 50 times better than the beer the beer is fine it's uh I love saying cold snack no absolutely in like the way that how about a cold snack dude that cam is designed so well it looks straight up like a Bronco like an 80s Bronco or something

killer uh but yeah they um but yeah their design does look great because they have a big gay audience I could see that have you seen because like the way the rainbow there is kind of a rainbow on it are we allowed to say that well my podcast I'm allowed to say it I mean they're supporting so I'm into it I guess

uh yeah I mean so they uh I don't know I guess they got the big lgbtq plus minus 1000. yeah because uh they're it's actually from like because I was confused it's from Wyoming and Kentucky not didn't know that yeah Montana that's exactly what I thought I think it's Wyoming and Kentucky and like the I don't know something like that because somebody

corrected me everything I know it's because I looked like an [expletive] and somebody corrected me on it okay now I know that and now I know that all right that would be one of those things that you would just say it uh because you think you know it yeah that sounds correct yeah but you put actually absolutely zero Research into it I

do that quite often yeah like in that it was definitely that I was drinking I was like yeah this Montana excuse me sir who cares what I'm saying I'm drinking it so back to this whole quantity thing over quality I think in some ways you could you can have both you can absolutely but I mean and it just comes to like the

idea of like you have to trust other people that are better at what they're doing than you are at that like hiring people to people that think that they can like go ahead and you know I'll do all my own album art which like it can happen it very much can I'm not saying that at all but when it looks bad and

you're not good at it you need to hire out for that for sure I've always I don't know who said it but it was basically like the you know successful person hires out the things that they can't do themselves yeah I think it was Donald Trump [Laughter] I don't uh do a lot of artists lack ideas I don't know if that's when

I say artists I mean like the songwriter types that you would be dude absolutely okay the one thousand percent do like I'll give it up to like your whole camp and Mike and everybody I love a good reference email okay because I think people are like I think it's like getting tattooed people are scared to throw ideas because they think that you're

gonna copy it or like you're gonna be offended I was like man I've uh that's kind of the downfalls I'll do several different styles I was like I kind of need to know where you're going yeah I mean because cold turkey that would be like somebody saying like Okay I want you to write a song it's like oh good grief just a

song does the subject matter I don't know you're the artist go yeah that yeah I get it um but then on the flip side I've had it at times where it's like yeah you got to give somebody some direction and some themes and Aesthetics and reference points but I've worked with uh you know artists that do what you do that it's like

by the end of it like I did all of other than actually doing it's like did you come up with anything no for sure because there needs to be an element of it that I mean yeah if not why are you hiring somebody exactly well that's kind of like you know the thing I was I worked with somebody who I don't know

if he's bigger but he's trying to be and it's not my Camp of music it's definitely in that pop country of you know whiskeys and Baubles and you know and uh which I love the Bible but I mean yeah I know what you're saying it's a plan out like yeah I just had to clarify that yeah no sure oh it's not that

at all it's just the idea of like that image and like the overdone type thing and like I was just saying it with like no reference at all I was like do this okay go yeah and they didn't like it and it was exactly my thing if I see one more picture in a pasture with a guitar and I'm saying that because

I've done it yeah like when I first started the very first photo shoot I did it was probably five or six years ago I was in a pasture yeah but like does that bother you because this is kind of what I have well I just look back on it now and it's just like and I could tell like I didn't know what

I wanted I didn't know who I was I didn't know and then you like go actually to my first record and it's like what kind of photo shoot did we want to do and then it was like well let's take pictures of me shooting horses see but we came out with a really cool that's what I was gonna say it's like that

was when somebody first showed me a couple years ago I was like dude that picture knowing that he's a failure is cool as [expletive] right but it was real as opposed to me like what do we do I don't know let's go sit in the middle of a road well that's what I was saying about the pasture thing I was like it

probably is more annoying with a level of like I do this I do have you know I live in this sort of Life yeah besides somebody you can tell never has done that and so the awesome I don't think it's all about authenticity but like you at least need to find who you are in it 100 and I don't think and it

takes time but like it happens and when I first started I was a little bit nervous because it was like it was like man like who am I what am I what do I want to write about what do I want to sing about what do I want people to like know me as I think the creative process will bring a lot

out of you of you finding that too and I thought you were saying like quality over quantity I think the other thing of it is you're gonna have to make some turrets like you're gonna you're gonna go through like we're talking about the big versus the small like in those failures you're going to figure out more of like who you are and

what you're doing and people because it is like instant gratification because of like social media and stuff like that you want to be famous now you see all these people that like just came out and you know now they're blowing they're selling out the Opera they're selling out Billy Bob's and they don't have a full band and they don't it's their like

second record because they copied a formula somebody else was doing and did it pretty well but then like you see their second album because that's the real test you know it's like what are you doing now and it just kind of Falls flat that because there was nothing there now what do you think about like the second right so if you've got

this cool thing going on the first record and then like the second record is just basically like the first one well I mean if you did enough of it you could be all right because like you know the whole thing is like you spend like you know what your whole life running that first record and you have to write the second one

in a year yeah so you're gonna I mean but if you have enough rent from the first one you can just ride off that two times in a row true but then like I kind of think you also end up hating those second set as you get through the first set yeah I'm thankful that I didn't start getting any traction um well

and I didn't have any music out until my first record so yeah and that wasn't until like later in my 20s so it was like I have so many songs it's like I had three records wrote done before I released my first one so I already had the plan for the second one and the third one so like now I have like

four or five that like I could I could do and they were like already done and so now it's just refining it and bringing it in but when you look back at those like so say you wrote a record like two years ago and you go back and look at it or the song do you feel the same way about that song

that you still think it's good or do you hate it well I think time is a test is a good test for if it's actually good see I've been doing that in a different form I've been going back to like old like ideas and sketches I had where I had good ideas but I didn't apply them correctly okay and I like redo

it and I'm like oh this is a good thing now totally so that is 100 something that I do like rewriting a song and things like that you know your bones are there but nothing else is because you didn't know what you were doing yet yeah or like I have this chorus that's cool but then for some reason the melody is just

not meshing with the verse Melody that I have oh yeah and I just scrap them and I've gotten I've tried to force myself to completely scrap ideas in the sense that like I keep no record of them yeah I don't have the melody written down I don't have the lyrics written down and just trusting that like I created it and it's in

my head somewhere but it just at that time it was not used in the appropriate place and sometimes pulling it back out it can come out differently and better yeah that's what I mean is like I'll be in the middle of something brand new maybe I got this cool thing on the guitar and I'm just kind of riffing on it and just

singing a little bit and then all of a sudden this course part comes out and I remember it yeah and it'll I know I wrote it like five years ago and but you know if you if you asked me to sing that part before I was actually playing that little new thing yeah I wouldn't be able to remember it's like it just

came up oh then it was the perfect spot well you and you're talking about how you're an overthinker and like everything everywhere all at once I think that's a lot of that is like when you're when you're forced to do it you're like oh I don't know but like not if you're forced to do it if you're trying to do it like

willing like in just on your own flow but if you have to do it like a deadline yeah I always thought that would be the worst thing for me it's the best thing in the world interesting because I can't let my thoughts get in the way anymore it's like you just do and your brain knows what it's doing and you're actually trusting

it for once and it just comes out because you're not getting in its way anymore and so like that's a big thing for me is like right that's one of the things I think I'm pretty good at doing posters for is like posters have a day have a hard deadline and like right now I'm doing um well this won't come out so

I can say for a poster for my buddies and like read Southall that band yeah and um I've redone the thing like four times your style would fit perfect with them so and that's what I'm excited for him because I actually met their guitarist who was their ex guitarist and then joined again and we became really good friends and uh he kind

of became like my little mentori in design because he got real into it and that was the first time I played that role and then um Reed hit me up I was like hey we should do this and I met them all at his wedding and I was like damn we get along great and so it's really been like a cool getting

to where we are there and uh but yeah like I've redone that post for the past four days I've drawn I'm doing birds with it because their new albums for the birds and so I'm kind of doing like these rough like vultures and [expletive] and I've drawn so many birds I hate birds to begin with like up and down hate birds Oh

you mean like the like physically I hate birds which like brings that back as I'm drawing them too because they're dinosaurs you know I hate them now why do you hate birds my grandma hates Birds I hate she's scared of them I hate birds because of my grandma uh my grandma would send me to the chicken coop to get birds and they

would all attack me as a kid and they the rooster would chase me around and Peg me and I just hated it I mean and I actually there's two things there's that and when I was um I can't remember how old I was I was pretty young and one of my uncles had an ostrich farm and uh Shamrock out there and uh

my family thought it was real funny to like pen me and I can't remember who was there my dad wasn't there because he would have got pissed because he hates Birds but they stuck me in the pan with an ostrich and the ostrich just chased me around and it was the most terrifying thing in the world and so yeah I hate birds

hey I tried to face it a few years ago and I tried to feed an emu and then I got pissed off I tried to feed yeah it was at a gator farm so it's fine um how did it go uh he tried to like uh get my fingers so I wasn't a fan he was trying to eat me clearly he didn't

get it though no not this time but I didn't give him another chance you pop him yeah did you no that's good for you no I screamed like a woman it ran away did you yeah there's a video that I try to hide my grandma's scared about him getting in her hair interesting I think it happened when she was a kid she

also had the traumatic kid experience with a bird it like got like in her hair and started like pulling on her hair and stuff when I was a kid we were camping in like New Mexico and you know hummingbirds go after red yeah my mom had a big red bow on there's like five hummingbirds after and I thought it was the funniest

thing in the world boy you've had a pretty traumatic bird experiences yeah now that I'm saying it out loud his new record has a lot of angst in it so uh maybe you can channel that into your bird design that's what it is I'm just the pain through the birds there man dude his new music is quite interesting uh it like some

of it has some like real like Honky Tonk Vibes dude that album the structure of it because I'm a big album flow guy yeah like uh whenever I do like full albums with people and work through like the whole because I also do like a little bit of marketing because I did like the record label for so long and so like with

smaller artists I held them set up their stuff and we took and I went to school for audio engineering when I was doing oh right on that was my radio and I did all that and um I'm a big fan of the flow of albums which I think is kind of a lost art now totally people just kind of throw this you

know I worked with an artist maybe six months ago that was putting on an LP of 24 songs and I'm insane at one time yes one album why I don't I don't know I have no idea it's the exact opposite of the way people consume you it didn't work out so it doesn't matter but uh but yeah he um like I love

a good flowing album and that album is really interesting because it starts out and it's very like the kind of weird Tom Petty kind of thing he has and then like in the middle it hits this Mark and there's that dude from uh the damn quails he plays on one of them there's like a real chicken picking crazy part that's it's called

like uh here I am here we go or something and it's super Honky Tonk yeah I think that's the one specific yeah and it's like right in the middle and the album kind of goes a different direction after that but that albums that those two songs I was telling them I was like man if y'all write an album that's these two the

feeling of that song and the one right after it because the one right after it's about meth so there's like that one and there's one that's like high speed test or something and it's just a you know they're from Oklahoma it's about meth yeah but uh those two songs I'm like man if y'all do an album of that I love that but

yeah I heard a cover that he did of petty I'm trying to think which song it's on his like live oh it's breakdown dude it sounds really good it is really good and what a cool Petty song to do the best man because I think they recorded that like right as he passed away really yeah man he crushes the vocals on that

too oh I know and that's like kind of like when I was talking to them it's like they're that's very much the feel I get from that it's like you know Tom Petty never fit into like an actual thing he kind of did his own thing and I think that's awesome yeah like who else what's funny is nowadays some of Tom Petty's

music is like more country than oh yeah some country listen to wildflowers that's like a late album of his and he's like wow it's an amazing album it's like you know songwriter album it's got like folk stuff to it's beautiful man is one of my favorites yeah there's a whole segment of those guys that you know you got like Jackson Brown you

got petty you got Dylan like even like I would even like it's like melon Camp is in there and then like I would even throw like Seeger Bob Seger in there yeah and like some of those guys back in the day they were considered Rock oh yeah and I or like the eagles you know they're considered Rock like well the weird thing

is like you know the Eagles get a lot of [expletive] but like the eagles I liked are like um there is like side of the Eagles uh it's just like a fun thing to hate the Eagles but like there's certain that's so edgy oh yeah I know well but like even with that do you know who Graham Parsons is I know of

him okay so like Graham Parsons had a huge like reach in that scene he was hanging out with like um like the Rolling Stones and stuff back then and like you know like Honky Tonk Women by The Rolling Stones that was him Graham Parson was directly hanging out with him and um I'm trying to think of that other because he was in

the Flying Burrito Brothers too yeah and so like that's my favorite we were talking about like the 70s and all the music coming out of it there's like a little scene right there of like the rock and roll dudes hanging out with the country dudes and um it's like there's an album I found from my friend like in the last five years

called uh no other by Gene Clark have you heard that Gene Clark was like the first alt country band he had a band called uh Clark or Dillard and Clark it was really good and like um I'm trying to think that he wrote songs for a lot of other people and he was in um Flying Burrito Brothers he was in the birds

Gene Clark was and he came out with this album called no other it's amazing it's like um psychedelic country that's like really big and has strings and it's like an album that I just kind of hit me on the left field and I put it on like at least once or twice a week it's incredible from front to back yeah but it's

just like that like Rock and Roll country feeling songwriting and I just don't think it was a segmented back then you know yeah well and then there's the other like there's contemporary stuff too like this new grass blue grassy type sounding stuff that most people would identify as like you know a Mumford and Sons kind of thing yeah or like Lumineers and

that those types of sounds are super interesting to me yeah uh but then there's a more like traditional country sound that's also very interesting it's really weird how big country has came back over the past like 10 years yeah like I remember and this is just me being that person at one point is like all the things I used to really like

nobody liked and now as I get older everybody likes them yeah like the fact like I was saying I DJ we have like a little dj group and we do vinyl records and we do you know we just call it Texas Boogie because it's like Tejano music all the way to like rock and roll and everything in between but like when I

was nerding out about these country records 10 years ago nobody gave a [expletive] about it I was like oh my God I found this you know Ernest tub record that was you know this certain kind of nobody would care and now that's like a big thing which also makes me mad because country records getting expensive like the old ones well they've turned

into that novelty Adam I know man it kills me I can't find like Japanese Johnny Paycheck bootlegs anymore it's a real pain in the ass well that goes into like the collectible world that has exploded well and that was the thing is like you know there's been like record collectors but like nobody cared about the country albums until like the past like

five years and so I have like some really cool like old rock and roll country albums but then they got expensive because yeah used two people would like set up a box of records and be like free you know and now everybody ebays and checks every one of them which is I get it make your money but yeah kind of kills my

game yeah for sure of like finding that like I found uh do you know who blue cheer is um most like they're like kind of the first like hard rock and roll out band they played like some you know that's not most people you would probably know this Summertime Blues by Alan Jackson that's a blue chair cover they're from like San Francisco

they're actually like there's this yeah but it's like their version is like a crazy heavy riff in the middle of it from like 68 and uh they were made by this dude uh the dude that made the artwork for that album was like a Hell's Angel that hung around and hate Ashbury and sold LSD insane stuff but yeah they uh I have

a first press of that out of that record that's like worth a lot now but when I got it nobody knew what it was and it made me real stoked yeah no kidding dude just like fun fact on that the guy that made that album cover he his album like I don't love the Grateful Dead I like the way they look more

than anything and he did yeah the dead thing has been tough for me we I even had tickets to go see him with John Mayer because I love John Mayer you do and yeah we just ended up not going man ended up being a weird deal but yeah like I wanted to because I love John Mayer man yeah John Mayer rules he's

like the coolest guy in the world yeah and people give him [expletive] too I was like why because he's cooler than you because people are man a lot I don't I don't get where people just hate on stuff because just because something is popular yeah doesn't mean it's bad I mean it makes you look it's a bad look to just hate on

things because they're cool yeah like at least try yeah 100 I like it I like it dude yeah regardless of if other people like it and that goes for if a bunch of people like it sure that doesn't mean I don't like it man and there's been times where like I'll just it's not that I hate it I just don't give it

the time and then I'll get into something that people were into like three years ago I'm like okay you're all right this is really good oh dude I miss it all the time I missed it on the country boat to be honest because like geographically where I grew up everybody listens to Country and you know 90s and 80s and early 2000s country

was and then out here Texas country was basically the soundtrack for every you know you're walking to the grocery store and it's playing in the back right and you're subconsciously listening to it all the time and uh and I was just learning to play guitar at that time so that style of music is typically a little bit more simplistic yeah so when

you're learning an instrument I think most people go down this road of like you're having to learn like real sophisticated stuff and unless it's difficult to play You're like would you learn to play guitar what were the first couple songs you learned uh um man I was I was super into you know uh like a like Jack Johnson and I got into

like a lot of the blue stuff with uh with Stevie Ray and Hendrix and speaking of such a huge Clapton fan yeah um like I'm still a huge Clapton fan and he was one of those that really he was one of the first ones that was able to bridge the gap between playing like blues music and rock music yeah also having this

softer acoustic side but playing his acoustic very interestingly oh yeah for sure uh so he Incorporated a lot of finger picking stuff and um so that deal that John Mayer does that sort of slap technique yeah he does while he's picking like Clapton did that yeah for sure you know and uh he's not like he's the first guy to do that but

and then like Mark Knopfler was a big one Dire Straits yeah Dire Straits rules so much so there was there was music that I was listening to that was maybe musically a little bit more sophisticated and so it was like oh that stuff is too simple yeah you know and then I had a point in terms of songwriting that probably at the

beginning of college and I was like okay this thing and I kind of I knew all the country music yeah and it's like I just I just hadn't fully embraced it yet but I knew yeah you were kind of like me like that's the base level when you grew up in places like that it's like it's everywhere it's everywhere the pop music

yeah because I would 1 000 say it's the pop music of Texas because everybody does you were talking about Jack Johnson man brush fire fairy tales will always be like a staple out it's amazing you want to talk about Nostalgia yeah because when I first started playing all I wanted to do was be able to sit around a campfire with my buddies

and be able to pick a little bit and play and I was I was pretty mellow of uh gotten a little bit more uh amped up as I've gotten older which is kind of odd yeah it's the opposite of most people go most people get quiet you got louder yeah I did uh which is weird I've actually never really thought about that

before it's like you're zooming out and you're like oh yeah that's a thing yeah but I was like way more mellow um I guess I'm sort of mellow I don't know I'm still trying to figure out you don't have to be in a box it's fine let's keep it open uh just start that you know avant-garde jazz music whatever the but yeah

the music thing I've just taken influences from all over the place and then now it's coming out in my music you know which makes it difficult because people can't totally pinpoint you know what you are and what you sound like so it makes it difficult for some people to sink their teeth into it because like I get I get crap from a

lot of people because it's like I'm not technically traditional country yeah but then you know I want to be able to put you in a box and it's like why aren't you wearing boots bro I thought you were country and it's like oh my gosh come hang out for a week and we'll see who's country you know what I mean it's like

so obnoxious it's like just because I don't you know it's not an outfit it's fine yeah exactly but I mean I kind of feel like I deal with the same thing of like you always see these things like Mitch down into this or that and I kind of like just take my life experiences and kind of make something that's you know what

it is that's the most interesting stuff to me yeah and like that's one of the coolest compliments I get is like I'm really bad at compliments like I don't like oh you're talented because I've I don't know a long time ago somebody told me that like you know talent is the worst because Talent uh when is it Talent gets lazy and you

know hard work goes on that whole thing and so like I don't like that getting in my head because you know maybe I'll think I'm good and God forbid we don't need that and uh but just the idea of like I'm trying to do like my lived experiences together it's like you know I started out in a small town a living country

and then I went somewhere else and I people are like oh your work feels nostalgic like I've seen it before and that's because a lot of my stuff is like my first comic that I ever saw or cartoon was do you know cow pokes by Ace Reed yeah man dude that's great I love you nobody ever knows that and I try to

tell them it's that whole thing like Feed Store calendars and like Ace read that was like my first thing I saw that I thought was great and I always wanted to emulate that and like what it did and like I love little cartoons that talk about like you know beef prices and stuff and that's that was where I grew up and it

was great and so like if I can incorporate that with like what I know now that's just like making my own thing where it is totally I love that yeah you'll probably dig uh some of the design stuff that I'll be having coming out too because it's gonna pull some it's gonna pull from some different directions for sure and then musically it's

the same way and it's like a little you know people are gonna be like oh I saw a little bit of it not to go to a deep end but like the interesting like uh retro wavy stuff I dig that yeah man see and it's funny you're talking about like a low five beats because that's uh I think me and Mike were

talking I uh I'm big into like Japanese culture oh yeah I was just talking my wife the other day about like Japanese culture is crazy because they'll take anything that we do and make it like 50 times better like have you ever like cattle like cattle or Bass Fishing dude you never know about bats oh those Japanese bass all the best bass

baits come from Japan like one thousand percent they're all did not know that yeah dude there's a whole like the world record bass is from Lake biwa there in Japan it's like a 26 pound did you know they have amazing like skiing too yeah dude so like I'm a big b I love snowboarding like one of my favorite things to do in

one of my dream trips is to go see I have a one of my real my really good friends he was in this huge metal band that toured the world until a couple years ago and he spent a little time with his dad in Japan and then went back there last year and he's the one that got me into all like realizing

how crazy Japan is and everything yeah but like all but they love like Western absolutely a lot there's this video I'll have to find it's one of my favorite things in the world it's like a late 80s early 90s Honky Tonk and they're singing uh Johnny Paycheck but it's like real like the dialect it's like the beats off and it makes like

the most amazing way that song could sound and it's like Take This Job can shove it but it's kind of like offbeat and it's very odd but it's really cool is it the Lo-Fi thing no it's just like dudes uh dressing up like it's probably like when Urban Cowboy hit that okay that whole thing fascinating which like that whole thing my dad

says that uh he would always get mad about like yeah I hate Urban Cowboy Wranglers went up 20 bucks and never went back down oh it's the truth yeah absolutely it's the truth I feel like we're going through the second wave of that right now I've like the second wave of what happened with that Urban Cowboy and like I can dig it

like I want because I love the culture I love Western culture and like cowboy culture and all I love it man yeah um and I want people to experience that because it's very rich yeah uh at the same time like you know don't you're not fooling anybody yeah right I don't wear a cowboy hat like dress up do all that's totally cool

but like the second that you're gonna like give somebody else a hard time because they're not wearing their hat right it's like bro you're an accountant pump the brakes yeah I mean in I don't know like I go I'm a real big like Western nerd and going back into like I think the funniest thing about like when people go back and look

at like the wild west the wild west lasts like 10 years it wasn't like a long lasting thing it was just in front of the railroad you know okay and when the railroad is over nobody cared about like cowboy culture or the wild west until movies made it cool in like mid you know the 50s or whatever so like I always found

like that's a really interesting part of it is like being a cowboy was not glamorous because like at the time that it was really big it was just like the poorest people alive and the roughest jobs in the middle of nowhere yeah people don't want to do that they want to go live in the city where it's nice right and so yeah

and then even within the cowboy culture man there's you just got to be careful about how you talk because there's always somebody that's like more Cowboy oh yeah and there's always somebody that's less and it's like if you get a little too big for your britches there's gonna be some dude that you bump into that you're like oh my gosh this dude's

a real deal I love the dudes I mean like there's a dude that it went uh he worked out here when we with my dad when he did but he's known him his whole life dude's name is pokey and I never met a more Cowboy fell in this guy I had ever more than I'd see him and he had this Charlie mustache

that went down and his shirt was always wet from where he was washing his mustache and it's gross but like that I was like that just had a profound impact like that the visual of it oh my gosh I'm glad you said because of him washing it just the drawer I was just thinking just like oh God getting sick I have I

had I have issues with stuff like that even somebody like eating you know dude I hate it I was taught I did brisby's podcast recently and we were talking about like my phobia or not I guess it would be phonias yeah like the Sound audio stuff dude I um somebody dude absolutely it drives me crazy I annoy myself same that was something

like when everything's shut down for like you know we had the whole shutdown last year that was something that I was very happy I didn't have to do like listen to people eat and I'm kind of like I don't know if I want to hear people eat anymore can I this is gonna sound super mean yeah can I probably shouldn't say this

do it but like I love old people yeah okay I love them but like when I'm eating in a restaurant I can't watch them eat oh yeah like watching an old person gums gum down a stage yeah dude I just can't do it man me and my wife talk about this all the time of like once I get to a certain age

it's okay to just like turn me out like I don't wanna turn me out to pasture dude well I have like I have a plan it's fine I was like let's go to like super bear infested Woods right like the most bearing fists if you could say sure and just dose me up with LSD and push me in there okay and I'm

done okay yeah because I don't want to be buried anyway like I have big I don't that whole thing I heard an acid trip is like contagious I mean I don't know maybe with the Bears I mean if they're eating me they probably will get some they probably would yeah they last for a while they're good maybe contagious wasn't the right word

yeah I mean like acid Berry Carnival that'd be cool what would you call that if you consumed something that and then you caught it you know like contagious like psychedelic uh contamination maybe whoa that sounds like an album that sounds like an album title psychedelic contaminations yeah that's gonna be hard to say it's like the opposite of like you know radiation it's

like you're putting psychedelics in the water and the whole world's dosed I feel like I just got it there you go you're woke now welcome to it hey what would uh can you divulge this is my first time meeting you yeah absolutely uh but you're making this it actually makes that cool yeah it's this actually makes it like the only other podcast

I've done I knew the guy and so I felt like I was repeating stuff yeah but meeting somebody and doing it kind of makes it worth it yeah I was doing it where we would go over here at Sweetie Pie's Ribeyes Sweetie Pies Ribeyes you can eat they can use that too there you go uh for they're like right next door from

what we do our podcast and uh normally they got great steaks but normally whenever I have a guest like we go over there and have lunch you know before it but then I found we'd sit there and have lunch for an hour you know yeah absolutely and then we'd come in here and then you'd have to like redo all of it just

feel like you're hearing the stories twice because yeah so now I've started doing it where it's like I just want to walk in meet him then do it yeah and talk to people I think it's a way better format yeah uh but what I was gonna ask is if you could divulge sort of your idea for because you're doing the coyote yeah

absolutely man I don't so like I'm going back and forth with it because I definitely know like the layout like I know what I want the lettering and everything and so one idea I have I feel like it might be too I won't say dark but a little like not it's mainstream it's a dark song it is a dark song and so

like what I was did you catch it too you got it yeah absolutely and like I grew up coyote hunting you know and like I do the whole and so what I was thinking about for a long time was just like skins on a fence yeah you know because like that's you know when you grow up doing that and the other one

I had which I'm not going to use I don't like it was like the idea of like crosshairs of crosshairs with a coyote in it you know with the other because I don't wanna I don't know it's kind of weird to try to like give too much away with a lyric shirt with it right because you don't want to overdo it because

just getting the imagery of like I know I want it to look like an old truck stop shirt with the name and the circle yeah and then like but that's I don't I think that's about as wordy as I want to get with it and then just do kind of like a coyote scene with it yeah with it and not try to

do you know I like the Western like the Retro Western feel of it where it's just a coyote like out there but I like the crosshairs but it's a little dark in it you know because that's really on the nose yeah it's like too literal it's a little too little yeah a little too literal yeah because what I could tell from some

of your stuff is I don't know if the right word is surrealism you do something yeah absolutely I saw one with like an eyeball yeah man it was pretty wild looking a lot of that stuff I really like old like mid like 50s or 60s like sci-fi like Western or sci-fi stuff yeah and then I like old western stuff too and just

kind of putting those together with it yeah hey so listen to this idea um I had one I have a song called Stampede okay you should go listen to it because uh because I like taking some like Western ideas or like traditional I guess you call them Cowboy ideas yeah but then try to write them in a way that is a little

bit more palatable to a broader audience yeah like use some of those Aesthetics and some of those topics but then make it in a more to where we're not actually just talking about going out and or riding the fence right we're gonna camp out under the stars yeah so like the song Stampede I'm using the metaphor of a stampede but applying it

to like a relationship or even a friendship because like in the chorus it says like even on these city streets uh and like I have to scream Stampede and so my idea was is that kind of like an overwhelmed thing uh like a stampede is like a stampede like the like the not personific but like just the idea of like the overwhelm

because that feels like a stampede when you're overwhelmed by a person or people or whatever it's like a stampede yeah every time you're with me I have to scream Stampede and it says like even on these city streets uh like wrecking balls we trample on this town yeah so it was like so my idea was to do somehow do the Stampede but

like going through an actual City oh yeah and the first lyrics to the song are uh when the sky Fades to black rain cloud Thunder Rolls and paints the night with lightning bolts and so you had like this almost thunderstorm running over the city for sure and you have the Stampede going through the city and maybe even knocking down some buildings yeah

that's awesome I dig that yeah because like real abstract looking like that and it could definitely go into like that comic book style like we were talking about you know with that well and you were talking about like modern settings with like old lyrics that's one of the things like I know everybody loves Sturgill but like there's like a that uh Hilltop

Mountain album my favorite one me too absolutely and it's I think what I love about that is that he takes like he doesn't try to be like a cowboy in the 60s trying to do his thing he's making Honky Tonk music for now yeah and he's up there in his new balances yeah absolutely and then when you talk about like not having

to look that people gave him so much [expletive] for that but what's interesting is he would have been less he would have it would have hit me sort of just it would have been corny if he's up there in his little get up absolutely playing that music it would have been like okay got it I mean this before but it was striking

that it was like oh this guy doesn't care and but it's super country well yeah and when he was like you know like the stuff about like uh what is that song um spending all my money on weed and pills where he talks about like I could be in a tank bills that's like so modern as hell but it feels like the

most country honky tonk song you've heard and that's what it was because those dudes then they were writing what's around them not like another time yeah and that's like when you look at like Wayland stuff it wasn't like he was like making some dreamy landscape it was like what I'm dealing with here now what it is yeah and so like I think

people like Nostalgia is a killer you know like you look back and they think oh it was so great then but like I truly believe that like every time's the same we just look back on it differently I would agree with that yeah like Nostalgia makes you think oh I was like oh the 90s Are So Beautiful yeah they were just a

time man and you lived in it yeah there's good I mean 20 years from now people are just going to look at this time with some sort of nostalgia it'll be something for sure yeah no but it is interesting to see the different uh you know little time capsules one of the weirdest things speaking on that is like I uh was looking

through like books of like references that you look when you're drawing and stuff and I was looking online at a new at like new stuff and it's really odd because I wouldn't want to do this but like there's so many things that are doing like masks and stuff I was like man how weird it is super weird well it's like you see

movies and stuff now and you see movies that were made this last year and they're about that I'm like man you know what I don't want to hear about oh that yeah gosh see an album cover with like a mask that's gross jeez the art has to escape that like not deal with it exactly yeah like calling it The covid Sessions yeah

that's like the last thing I want to remember dude for sure give me more like find um you know find something in there like I'm making some music right now and using some things uh sonically and production wise with the music that I'm making that what I felt like during the whole covid stuff and the things that I saw getting popular because

of the way other people were feeling right like musically like incorporating some of that stuff into my production into my music yeah absolutely it's feeling based it's not like I'm gonna call it the covet session yeah well I mean that's like the whole like being two on the nose is kind of rough you know I would agree yeah like because I don't

know it's like hearing songs written where it's like bro you ever heard of using a metaphor like you don't have to say I like her and I love her well and I don't like uh I don't like thing I don't like hearing people explain their songs either like I think that it's all open to interpretation because yeah my idea of it is

completely different like let's just say like coyote from what you say to what I say I could probably take something completely different out of it yeah and so yeah well it's like that Stampede song I wrote it more from a perspective of a relationship right and then people were talking about yeah man it's just you and your buddies burning it down and

I'm seeing interesting even just hearing the lines from it's like I take a bit like a different way it's like you know when you're with somebody and it and it feels right but they're like a little much like they're like I've had people that like we have so much like probably me well no mine is more just like okay so this was

I always call it punishing you've met this person like you're at a show somebody comes up to you after and they tell you everything about you and they won't like let you breathe and they're just like right there and they want you to do this and they want to show you this person they want to talk to you like what does this

mean what does that do you want to do this can I buy you a drink yeah it's like that Punisher stuff man it's a little rough like people to punish her man we're gonna have to start saying that man that's what like having friends in bands and stuff that's what we always talked about it's the people because like I was talking about

my buddy that you know goes on tour he has like I like metal But Metal heads are the worst fans in the world but the best fans too they're very loyal but like he would come off stage he was like dude I just had to like get ready because I was out there and like I'm sweating I just did this thing and

I come off stage and there's just gonna be like these dorks in my face just overdoing it dorks yeah uh yeah there's people like that but at the same time it's like I mean you're tickled to death that they're even that interesting for sure but like and I'm I think more mine is just like in that moment you just kind of came

off this little bit of a high and you're like trying to okay dude yeah for sure yeah well so how does somebody do you will you are you mostly referral based at this point I mean like are there people that can actually get into anybody can and like that's what's weird is I've been getting like all over the place I love the

fact that like I we're talking about like art being like Hootie Tooty you know my whole mission not mission that sounds really intense my whole thing I'm going for is I want to be like the blue color artist I want to be the person that breaks down those like big walls of like I don't want to work as a person because I

can't because design should be accessible to anyone yeah like I see that old design that like my aesthetic or whatever you want to call it is I always like Feed Store design you know like I want to be somebody that like I would love for just like a regular guy to hit me up and be like hey I've got this business going

let's do this because those walls of like art and blue collar are kind of [expletive] and I want to tear those down here's a question do you do a lot of the art like on an iPad so it really just depends like I will it depends what I'm going for I start out like I would call my iPad like a Sketchbook my

iPad is what I do like my ideas on because there's no setup to it I can just sit down and go you know and then like I'll go from there and if usually what I'll do if it's like it depends on what style they're going for if they want a really clean one I won't um I won't go to pen and paper

but like if it's kind of like the rough and rugged thing I go from that and then I take it to paper yeah I draw it out like that and then I scan it in and go from there because I've always had an idea for just a music video very simple would be whoever does the design or maybe that song get a

time-lapsed version of them creating the artwork oh yeah and just do that as the music video I've been trying to uh get a little set up there because I know people for some reason love that like the live videos or whatever you know yeah I did and you just uh put it in like whatever like yeah like a time lapse thing yeah

real quick and then it would just be for this song I did a um what are they called like the canvases for Spotify you know I did one for a dude out in Wyoming that's a songwriter named Jordan Smith where I do like drew his face and Jordan Smith yeah uh Jordan like Isaac Smith um I don't know I don't think so

he just where's he at he's out of Wyoming oh no it's not the same guy no this is I got a good friend this is I mean this is a dude he's uh from Wyoming out there he's a really good songwriter but um yeah I did like a few songs for him and like that was the so that was it that was

like it's like an eight second lapse you know but which is cool but like eight seconds is real quick yeah and so it looks like insane how fast you know yeah mine would be like three minutes seeing that I think that would work like totally is like getting like a top view of it you know be super cool it would be yeah

that's a Super Rad idea like especially because I just see people's like I love seeing stuff like that because I like seeing from my point of view other people's workspace and how they work yeah because mine like we're talking about your brain being everywhere I'm sure if people that are like classically trained or whatever look at mine they're like what are you

doing because mine is like I'll finish like half these letters then I'll go over here and finish them then I'll go over here and uh it all just comes together like really interestingly like I was watching a time lapse because like when you use on the iPad you can do a time lapse of me doing that we were talking about that read

South a poster and it's like I got halfway through the name then I went down to a bird then I went down over here and it just looks insane yeah but I think it's like a really a video of the inner working of my brain yeah for better well but that's what art is I think so yeah I stopped caring like somebody

told me a while back like I used to always think like oh man what do people that you know do this gonna think of it and I had to write a big sign I put it right on top of my like desk it was like stop making for other designers 100 man like I'm right there with you like you don't write songs

for their songwriters like nope if you guys want if somebody wants to be a part of it and you dig it great if not whatever I'm gonna keep doing my thing songs in my room because like that's kind of the thing of it is like somebody asked me a while back he's like why do you do it at this point it's because

I can't not like I've tried to like not create for a while and like I'll just pick up like little odd jobs and go try to do them and I remember why I do what I do like it's more uncomfortable to not do it all I can think about all the time like whenever I wake up in the morning I'm like oh

I don't want to do this today I think about all the times that I've had like the worst jobs and then I just got like and now I'm like you would kick your own ass if you saw yourself now because you're waking up to draw dude like you're waking up to work with I mainly work with musicians it's like you're going to

work with musicians that you never thought you would and you're doing it remember like six years ago when you were waking up at 4am to load trucks with a forklift and you hated your life like what are you doing man like perspective and that's all it is like I have to remind myself that all the time is like you know it could

always be worse totally well uh your website people can go there if they need to get any type of work done and they can get in touch with you yeah there's like right on the front there I even have an express lane it's just my name Stoney Lane bass heck yeah I didn't figure you could do much better than just my name

yeah perfect so people can go to that um Instagram they're kind of on all of it yeah man and it's just that name you find it and we'll have the old coyote Design coming out here pretty soon yeah absolutely yeah I'm excited on that one yeah dude well thanks for coming in absolutely man yeah see y'all later we'll catch you next time

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